PRODUCTION OF MUNITIONS

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23085, 30 July 1940, Page 8

PRODUCTION OF MUNITIONS

* MINISTER’S REPLY TO ENGINEER DIFFICULTIES TO BE OVERCOME (PRESS ASSOCIATION TELEGRAM.) .WELLINGTON, July 29. In reply to a statement by Mr R. Burn, of the Precision Engineering Company, regarding the production of munitions in New Zealand, the Minister for Supply (the Hon. D. G. Sullivan) said he understood that a competent engineer, Mr James Cable, who accompanied him to Australia, and there personally investigated Australia’s methods, had publicly referred to some of Mr Burn’s statements as nonsense. “I agree with Mr Cable, and 1 am sure that everyone engaged in munition production in Australia would also describe Mr Burn’s statements as nonsense,” said Mr Sullivan. “Will Mr Burn ask nimself why the great industries of Australia have not yet ‘produced Bren carriers, Bren guns, and many other things so urgently needed by its fighting forces, and why they only very recently got into production on such things as grenades. He does not seem to realise that for making these things, veritably thousands of jigs, tools, gauges, and great quantities of special steels are needed; but in spite of months of intense effort and the expenditure of huge sums of money, Australia has not yet been able to produce. I was shown at the railway workshops in Melbourne, where Bren carriers are being made, a thousand special tools required for that one job, and these had to be designed from a survey of a model carrier in the shops. I saw in armament factories the production of guns held up for lack of special gauges, that up to the present could neither be produced nor secured. AH Facilities to be Used “The assumption by Mr Burn that my 15-minute broadcast a week ago was a full declaration of the policy of the Government ,in regard to the production of munitions is equally nonsensical. While in Australia we dealt with hundreds of items coming within the category of munitions, and I could not in an hour, let alone a quarter of an hour, cover reasonably an adequate report of the work done, or the intentions of the Government in connexion therewith, and may 1 say most emphatically that there never has been any intention on the part of the Government to do all munition work in the railway workshops. We will use whatever establishment, private or public, is most suitable for the job. “We are not in this issue one little bit concerned about any question of private or public enterprise. However, I desire to tell Mr Burn that the foundations of the magnificent effort now being made by Australia in the production of munitions—an effort that will be successful—are the great state factories and railway workshops, though quite wisely Mr Essington Lewis is bringing into the scheme all private engineering . establishments which can help in the production of parts, which are assembled at the state • establishments. I honour and admire Australia for the great job she is now doing. We will, to the limit of our, resources, try to emulate her, and I am grateful to all her public men, her great industrialists, and heads of her great state departments, for all the assistance they are prepared to give New Zealand in supplying plans, drawings, specifications, materials, and in some degree fabricated parts. I think it would have been many months, perhaps years, before we could have got into production on munitions without such help, and we have reason to be grateful to Australia for the spirit she has displayed towards us in these matters.”