NEW INDUSTRIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 148, 26 June 1939, Page 15

NEW INDUSTRIES.

CLAIMS OF SOUTH.

FAR-SIGHTED POLICY URGED.

CONCERN IN DUNEDXN.

(By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.)

DUNEDIN, this day,

_ "It would be advisable for the future welfare of the country if the Government adopted a more far-sighted policy when issuing permits for new industries," said Mr. P. O. Smellie, president of the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce. It was quite conceivable, he said, that if a steady preference continually went to the North by far the greater portion of the population of the Dominion would be centred in and around Wellington and Auckland.

With the very slow rate of natural increase in the population, and planned immigration apparently not being a matter for consideration at the moment, then of necessity the North would have to draw on the South for the human clement, to the very great detriment of the South. Mr. Smellie said it would not be drawing on the imagination to too great an extent to say that the time might come when the South, if it was neglected in the matter of secondary industries, would in time be little more than a rural community to supply the primary wants of the North. Such a position could never be allowed to arise.

The Chamber of Commerce wa« setting up a committee called the City of Dunedin Development Committee, comprised of nominees of various local bodies and one from the Department of Industries and Commerce to place before the Government and possible manufacturers the advantages of establishing businesses in Dunedin.

Undoubtedly, he said, Dunedin could supply all manufacturers' requirements in cheap sites, cheap electricity, unlimited water supply and ample coal. It was the city's own job to "boost" its advantages, but the Government, considering the well-being of the nation as a whole, might well assist by suggesting when new licenses were being issued that southern fields be investigated by would-be new manufacturers.

Manufacturers, continued Mr. Smellie, were of the opinion that labour was more satisfactory in the South than in the North. Not only were the workers more energetic owing to the temperate climate, but there was a greater steadiness in them, nor was there the same tendency to agitations and strikes in industry.