FAULTS OF NEW ZEALANDERS

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21404, 21 February 1935, Page 18

FAULTS OF NEW ZEALANDERS

| i ! MR SPIDY'S CRITICISM i READINESS TO APPEAL TO GOVERNMENT [THE PHESS Special Service.! AUCKLAND, February 20. The complaint that New Zealanders are so blessed by nature in their plentiful and healthy country that they are slow to adopt the advances made overseas in many branches of activity was made by Mr E. T. Spidy, A.S.M.E., in an address to-day to the conference of the New Zealand Society of Accountants. Mr Spidy spoke of scientific management and its application to secondary industries, and said that too often industry in this country was apt to run to the Government for help when a pinch came. "Many writers and others abroad refer to New Zealand as part of the South Sea Islands," said Mr Spidy. "We are sometimes included as islands in Australasia, or in Oceania. In other words, we are generally classified with the ideally sunny lands and easy going peoples and natives of the South Seas, up to a -point where it is a question worthy of some thought as to whether they are not right, or at least partly right. Whether these factors have influenced or retarded progress in New Zealand is also a matter that does concern us industrially.

Isolated Position "Owing to our isolated position on the globe, we may be slow and yet not know it. Other countries may be going ahead faster and we not know it. It may be that we do know w r hat is going on overseas, but we, in our isolated smallness, do not worry about it, and do not see the necessity for adopting the same measures in New Zealand. "From my own experience of having lived and worked for many years in different places in the Northern Hemisphere, I have no hesitation in subscribing to the natural charms and congenial conditions obtaining in New Zealand, and to say, that compared with many other places, we are so much better off naturally that we ought to be able to hold our own, at least, against our competitors in the production field. Indeed, for physical and health reasons, for conditions of living, and having an intelligent all white population and no foreign population problems, we ought to be leaders, rather than followers in world competition in the particular lines we produce. "The facts, however, are that we appear to be unable to do this without Government assistance, and one of the reasons why we are in this position is, I think, thai these very fine conditions under which we live, coupled with a contentedness engendered by prosperous seasons and good prices for our exports, have lulled us into a false sense of security which is to our detriment when world conditions change, and when our competitors go past us.

Mental Slowness "While it is quite wrong to apply the indolent Soiith Sea Islands touch generally to New Zealand, nevertheless I think it would be equally wrong to say that that brush had not just barely touched us, and that, in our island position, with its temperateness and freedom from outside influences, has resulted in an imperceptible mental and physical slowness creeping in, that necessity has not revealed until a crisis comes. "As each crisis comes, appeals seem to be invariably made to the Government for assistance either by separate units of industry or on behalf of a block of industries, and these are oftimes followed by investigations by commissions, which sometimes result in protection from competition or assistance in other ways in the endeavour to keep the wheels of industry moving, and the workers of the country employed and able to earn a living. These investigations have shown time and again that the claims to efficiency are not. always well founded even when judged by our own standards. What would result if comparisons were made with overseas up-to-date standards is not hard to imagine."