The Press THURSDAY, AUGUST 30, 1934. National Self-Sufficiency

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21256, 30 August 1934, Page 8

The Press THURSDAY, AUGUST 30, 1934. National SelfSufficiency

During the debate on the Customs Amendment Bill the Labour party made its usual perverse charge that the Government had " lost faith in " the secondary industries " and that the new tariff was a " gesture " to the fanners. It seems hardly necessary to answer the charge, since another organisation, even more vociferous than the Labour party, is proclaiming that the new tariff, far from favouring the primary industries. is a breach of the Ottawa agreements and gives only trifling assistance to British exporters. The Government is therefore entitled to cancel out the two criticisms and assume that the tariff revisions have implemented the Ottawa agreements without having any perceptible effect upon the economic life of the country. Moreover, as we have already pointed out, it is much too soon to generalise about the effects of the tariff changes and wrong to suppose that the tariff is the only, or even the greatest, influence determining the course of New Zealand's trade. In the last few years the abnormal restriction of imports has been mainly due to uncertainty over the exchange rate and to the need for providing about £10,000,000 a year for the service of external debt. Uncertainty over the exchange has been removed; but the external debt is still the real limiting factor on imports. There is. however, one aspect of the Labour speeches in the customs debate which is disquieting and deserves attention. It is the easy acceptance, particularly by Mr D. G. Sullivan, of " national self-suffici- " ency " as a desirable ideal for New Zealand. Mr Sullivan may be right when he says that international trade will not regain its Dre-war volume; and he may be right when he suggests that scientific advances have to some extent offset the advantages of the international division of labour. But when he asserts that New Zealand must seek to become as nearly self-sufficient as is possible in order to maintain the present standard of living, he talks sheer nonsense. In Italy national self-sufficiency has meant lower standards of living for a working class that was. even before Fascism, the poorest in Europe. In Germany and Austria, according to a recent League of Nations survev, the result of national self-suffi-ciency has been widespread malnutrition among the families of wageearners. Before the depression the average standard of living in New Zealand was probably the highest in the world; and the reason was that New Zealand's trade, in proportion to her population, was also the highest in the world. A heavy reduction in trade can only mean a fall in the standard of living; and the first to suffer will be those whom the Labour party professes to represent. Scientific organisation of industry cannot possibly make good the loss of wealth resulting from a heavy loss of trade, since New Zealand's population is not nearly large enough to support mass production industries. It may be that events will ultimately compel New Zealand to rely more on her own secondary industries, for which reason those industries must be encouraged. But in the meantime the best policy is to make every effort to maintain the volume of trade