COMMONWEALTH MEETINGS

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25303, 1 October 1947, Page 7

COMMONWEALTH MEETINGS

NO TALKS WITH N.Z. ON CUSTOMS UNION

DOMINION’S FILM TAX TO BE DISCUSSED (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

(Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, September 30 The New Zealand Press Association learns that the conversations on the Empire customs union proposal to which the Australian Prime Minister (Mr.Chifley) referred last week have been carried on by Australia House, London, outside the British Commonwealth financial talks.. They were taken up on Australia’s initiative, and New Zealand and South Africa have not participated in them. They are regarded as entirely exploratory and designed merely to clarify the situation. Certain statistical information relevant to the customs union proposal has been discussed with Mr Ernest Bevin, but it is emphasised that this should not be taken as an indication that the proposal has been accepted by

The New Zealand delegation to tbp Commonwealth financial talks hopes to conclude its part in the negotiations this week. Both the balance of payments situation and supply arrangements for 1948 have been carefully examined in consultation with the British Treasury and the Board of

Trade. , . x x ~ The only outstanding subject at the moment is the proposed alteration in the New Zealand film hire tax. This will be discussed within the next few days at a conference between representatives of the British Treasury, the Board of Trade, and the Commonwealth countries, with representatives of the American film industry. Negotiations between the British Government and the American film industry are still proceeding, and it is intended that the Commonwealth representatives should be given an opportunity to hear both the American and British points of view.

South African View The South African attitude to the Empire customs union proposal was outlined by Mr Heaton Nicholls, the South African High Commissioner in London, in a speech at Birmingham: when he said: “The bones of Empire free trade are lying in the ground ana cannot be resurrected. We cannot at this day recreate the conditions of which Joseph Chamberlain wished to take advantage. The opportunity f?r doing so has gone. If the term ‘customs union,’ applied to the Commonwealth, means what is normally meant by the term, that is to say a geographical area of free trade, then it is completely <*it. of date. “The Dominions are now independent sovereign nations concerned with the building up of their own economies, and an Empire customs union is as impractical a suggestion as the establishment of the House of Commons in Moscow.” Empire co-operation, however, was an entirely different matter, continued Mr Nicholls. All the Dominions believed in Imperial preference, and it was not their fault that its abolition had been discussed. Co-operation was vital not only to the Mother Country but to the Dominions. Military strategy alone demanded the dispersal of Britain’s population and much of Britain’s war potential to the less populated and less developed Dominions, which could become Britain’s support bases if the Commonwealth had ever again to fight for its existence.