"SIMPLY NOT TRUE."

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 153, 30 June 1934, Page 13

"SIMPLY NOT TRUE."

REPLY TO MR. GOODFELLOW,

GOVERNMENT STATEMENT. (I>y 'JYlejfrnpli.—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, Friday. In reply to further representations by Mr. W. Goodfellow regarding the exchange rate and the Ottawa agreement, the following statement was issued by the Minister of Finance, Mr. Coales, to-day: — '"The statement made by Mr. Goodfollow on behalf of the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Producers and United Kingdom Manufacturers' Reciprocal Trade Federation can be briefly answered. Mr. Goodfellow completely misses the point in his reference to Mayors denying responsibility for resolutions passed by meetings over which they presided. That waa not my statement. What I said was that I and other Ministers received telegrams over the names of and purporting to have been signed by Mayors. It turned out that in at least two instances Mayors had not sent or authorised the telegrams to which their names were affixed. Thai, as I said, waa something new in political methods in New Zealand. It is altogether a different point from the one answered by Mr. Goodfellow.

"I have no wish at all to see the Reciprocal Trade Federation cease holding meetings so long as they stick to facts, and I certainly have no objection to their telegraphing machine-made resolutions, which, after all, have the useful effect of swelling the revenue of the Post and Telegraph Department.

"It ia simply not true to say that 'millions of pounds'' worth of goods or 'shiploads of goods' in New Zealand's import trade are being diverted from Great Britain to Australia , owing to the exchange rate. The official figures ehbw New Zealand's imports from Australia were valued at £2,673,000 in 1933, compared with £2,922,000 in the previous year, a decrease of 8 per cent, while imports from the TJnlte<T Kingdom in 1034 were £11,120,000, compared with £11,788,000 in the previous year, a decrease of between f> and 0 per cent.

"In the present year, the first five months' figures show an increase in imports from both countries over the same period, for Inst year, there being an increase of 1204,000 in the imports from Australia.

"It- is thus misleading to speak in extravagant terms of tlie diversion of trade. Moreover, and as lias been repeatedly pointed .out, the New Zealand exchange rate has nothing to do with such diversion as has occurred. The exchange rate applies equally to imports from Australia and the United Kingdom, and an alteration in our exchange rate, for which Mr. Goodfellow and certain importers have agitated, would not affect the position as between Australia and the United Kingdom in supplying the New Zealand market."