asked the Minister for Supplies what is the basic ration of kerosene allowed to tractor owners for threshing per day.

The quantity of kerosene allowed to tractor owners for threshing is calculated not on a daily basis but by reference to the total amount of threshing which the applicant satisfies my Department is to be performed.

I am informed that there is a sort of partisanship in regard to this. Some tractor owners say that they are not getting a square deal and that there is a sort of partiality or a discrepancy between the amount which one tractor owner gets and that which is given to other tractor owners. The Minister says it is based on what he has to do. I think they all have enough to do, and I am led to believe that some tractor owners get considerably more than others.

That is so. The ration is not a flat-rate ration; it is distributed according to the amount of work which my Department considers the owner of the set will have to perform. We exercise discrimination and it leaves us open to the allegation which the Deputy has made, that there is exercised unfair partiality, as between one applicant and another. The alternative of giving out the various supplies on a flat-rate basis would lead to waste. We are doing that in the case of petrol and it was members of the Party opposite that objected to it.

I got the complaint which I have raised.

Has the Minister received no complaints that certain threshing-machine owners who have kerosene find themselves short of priming petrol, and may we assume that, where a threshing-machine owner has the kerosene to carry on operations, the microscopic quantity of petrol requisite for priming the engine will be made available?

Certainly.

I have heard of men who got eight gallons last August and found the petrol running out and who cannot use their kerosene on account of the shortage of priming petrol.

I wonder did the petrol run out in the threshing machine or in the owner's car.

Whatever punitive measures it may be expedient to take against the owner if he has used petrol improperly, would it not be better to put the threshing machine into operation?

What we can do is to give to the owner of the threshing machine a sufficiency of fuel to enable him to operate it. We have to rely on him to use that fuel to the best advantage.

If the threshing man satisfies the Minister that the petrol is gone, is it not desirable to give him petrol to carry on with, without prejudice to whatever penalties may be imposed if it transpires that he used his original allocation of petrol improperly? Otherwise you will have the kerosene and the threshing machine standing idle.

On what basis is the allocation made?

According to the amount of work to be done.