ASSISTANCE FOR INDUSTRY

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21239, 10 August 1934, Page 14

ASSISTANCE FOR INDUSTRY

♦-- — SUGGESTION TO PUBLIC AUTHORITIES

A suggestion that government and local authorities could do more to assist in the development of industry in New Zealand was made by Mr G. F. Davis, a prominent business man with interests in Australia and New Zealand, in an interview with a representative from "The Press" last evening. Mr Davis, asked if he could assign a reason for the recent comparatively rapid development of secondary industries in Australia, said that" progress in Australian enterprise had been greatly assisted by the help given through legislation and the willing provision of certain necessary public utilities. In this respect New Zealand did not compare very favourably; in many other countries the authorities seemed only too anxious to assist industrial enterprise and expansion in any way possible. Canada was quoted by Mr Davis as an example of comparison. The Davis Gelatine Company (Aus,tralia), Ltd., of which Mr Davis is the chairman of directors, was approached by the authorities in one of the Canadian cities and offered for a nominal figure the tenure of a factory site of 62 acres on one of the lakes. The site was valued at 23,000 dollars; the company was offered it for 500 dollars, with an additional offer to put down at the cost of the authorities two railway tracks into the property, to supply water at bare pumping cost, install sewerage, and to allow occupation free of rates and taxes, with the exception of the educational tax, for 10 years. For the sake of seeing an important industry established there, the city authorities were willing to make those concessions.

"Here we have not yet grown to realise the true value of industry," said Mr Davis. "I do not mean to be critical of the government or public bodies. I want to make that particularly clear, but here the same inducement and help is not offered to industry as in other countries."