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the consequences for New Zealand of British entry into the EEC. The details of the programme and every public utterance by Mr. Rippon were reported accurately and at length. Mr. Rippon made an excellent personal impression and was invariably portrayed as sympathetic to the New Zealand case. The news media reported New Zealand Ministers as being very satisfied with the results of the visit. But Press commentators have tended to revert to their previous doubts. This is partly because Ministers here have gone on repeating the remark made by Mr. Marshall on his return from Europe in July that New Zealand was fighting for its life (and in his speech of welcome to Mr. Rippon at the Parliamentary luncheon the Prime Minister repeated it again); but mainly because of the somewhat parochial, unrealistic, and wishful thinking on the part of reporters and commentators which characterises their attitude towards the EEC question. The New Zealand Press have always concentrated on the need for specific guarantees from Britain concerning New Zealand exports, and cast-iron assurances that Britain would not enter the Community if any harm at all were to come to New Zealand as a result. They did so again on this occasion. They also showed the usual lack of understanding of the danger of stating in public minimum requirements for New Zealand" at the beginning of negotiations. Mr. Rippon's Press conferences and speeches, which dealt very firmly with this point, should have gone some way to dispelling these illusions, but they are so widely held here that it is too much to hope that they will ever disappear. But reports that are beginning to come in from the dairying areas which Mr. Rippon visited indicate that the farmers in those areas feel well satisfied and reassured about our intentions towards New Zealand, and feel particularly reassured by Mr. Rippon's statement in his Press conference just before his departure from New Zealand that "we hope we will be able to arrange for New Zealand something more than a transitional period in the sense that we think there are problems which will require to be looked at in the much longer term. Not a permanent solution, because nobody could ever ask for a permanency in this sort of field, but a continuing solution subject to review from time to time".
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