WANTED: A MIDDLE COURSE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 146, 22 June 1945, Page 4

WANTED: A MIDDLE COURSE

"THE Minister of Industries and Commerce, when addressing workers in ■*■ an Auckland factory yesterday, said, inter alia, that it was "utter nonsense to say that if New Zealand developed its industries it would arouse antagonism in Great Britain." To-day there is a report from London of a memorandum prepared by a group of British tyre manufacturers, who express very plainly their antagonism to the policy of the New Zealand Government in so far as it affects their industry. They fear that by this policy they will be denied opportunities of reasonable competition, which the New Zealand Government pledged itself to afford to all British exporters to the New Zealand market. This protest, which is not likely to be the last of its kind, should prompt Mr. Sullivan, or Mr. Nash, to make a clear and comprehensive statement of its general policy and all that is involved in it. So far as it can be understood, the Government's view is that it must, in the Dominion's interests, promote the expansion of secondary industries, and that it can do so without adversely affecting the British trade as a whole. This remains to be proved, and it is important that it should be proved, for if the view is erroneous then, ultimately, New Zealand's export trade will be prejudiced, with consequences which the whole Dominion will feel. It is a difficult problem, not made easier of solution by the pleading of special interests. On the one hand there are those who seem careless of the consequences to Britain (and ultimately to New Zealand) of a policy which may unfairly handicap British manufacturers in their efforts to regain one of their markets; on the other are those who appear to be striving for the complete abandonment of the policy without regard for the unemployment that would result. The Government—any Government—will be expected to steer a course between these extremes; but it is important that it should convince the public here, as well as the British Government and the British manufacturers, that it has found the middle course. As a beginning it should open the hearings of the Bureau of Industry to the Press, so that the public may learn the general arguments on each side.