ECONOMY OF N.Z.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 90, 17 April 1941, Page 17

ECONOMY OF N.Z.

CONTROL BY STATE.

COMMENT BY MR. NASH.

That the Dominion's economy was now under the complete control of the Government to £ greater degree than in any other country, was mentioned by the Minister of Finance, the Hon. W. Nash, in addressing the annual conference of the l-'ederation of Labour. The Minister also pointed out that in the last twelve months the Dominion had met every commitment which had come due overseas, states the "Standard."

Imports had been confined to essentials and would continue to be restricted more and more to essentials, because if we wanted to win the war it could only be done by diverting funds from nonessential goods to fighting purposes. Although the volume of goods available had been greatly reduced, the money which the people had available had continued to increase, said Mr. Xasli. It had always been the Government's policy that the wage-earner should receive sufficient to enable him to purchase necessities of life and maintain a reasonable standard of living. Wages and salaries to March 31 amounted to £120,4.">2,000, a sum which had rever been equalled in the Dominion's history. The Minister added that although it had been necessary to withdraw purchasing power from all classes in order to maintain financial stability, the Government had taken good care that people on lower incomes had not been forced below a reasonable standard of living, and this would continue to be its aim. One method by which the Government carried out this policy had been to give more and more back to the workers in the way of social services.

Continuing, Mr. Nash said that NewZealand was already faced with serious restrictions on shipments of meat and butter abroad, and mijrlit have still similar trouble with still further products. If we could not sell exports, we could not buy imports, and this might even affect raw materials for many of our factories. The result might be a much reduced volume of goods for consumption and a real danger of inflation internally. In such circumstances, any movement to increase wages generally would have harmful effect upon wageearners themselves. The essence of the matter was that New Zep.land was faced with an economic crisis and it was essential that everything should be stabilised as far as possible.