MANUFACTURE OF TYRES

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22419, 4 June 1938, Page 4

MANUFACTURE OF TYRES

*4 BAN ON IMPORTS NOT CONSIDERED ASSURANCE GIVEN BY MR SULLIVAN (press association telegram.) WELLINGTON, June 8. “The Chambers of Commerce—New Zealanders who furiously oppose every proposal to establish manufacturing industries in New Zealand—have frightened themselves into a panic,” said the Minister for Industries and Commerce (the Hon. D., G. Sullivan) tonight. “They use the term ‘tyre monopoly’ as indicating the intentions of the Government, but no such proposal has ever been considered by the Government, or by myself. It is perfectly true that the Bureau of Industry and the Department of Industries and Commerce have been examining th'e possibility of establishing on ah economic basis an industry for the manufacture of rubber goods, including tyres. Equally true, I, personally, as Minister for Industries and Commerce, am desirous of establishing the industry, but I repeat that neither myself nor the Government has ever thought of prohibiting imports, anxious though I am as a New Zealander to have as much work done in this country as is reasonably possible. “The inevitability of additional manufacturing industries being established in New Zealand has been recognised by the Prime Minister of Great Britain (Mr Chamberlain),” said Mr Sullivan, “and I am sure that no British Government will take exception to such a Dominion endeavour. The tyre industry has been licensed unde£ the Industrial Efficiency Act, because it would not be economic to allow mol>e than one factory or two M. the most if the industry is to be fun on economic lines. It was for thaVSnd no other reason that the industry was licensed. * “The Chambers of Commerce do not appear to have the interests of New Zealand at heart, and their ideal appears to be to keep our country a primary producing country,” he said, “but in this they are in a hopeless minority. The Government of New Zealand is on the best of terms with the people of the United Kingdom, and in all our plans we seek solutions which will ensure results that will be mutually beneficial to New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the Empire as a whole.”