MR NORDMEYER’S COMMENT

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25365, 12 December 1947, Page 8

MR NORDMEYER’S COMMENT

“VERY CONDENSED REPORT” FULL STATEMENT AWAITED From Oui Own Reporter WELLINGTON, December 11. “The Government's policy on the tariff preferences to Great Britain and the rest of the Commonwealth has been stated in the most unequivocal terms on many occasions,” said the Acting-Minister of Customs (Mr A. H. Nordmeyer) to-night, referring to remarks attributed to the Minister of Finance (Mr W. Nash) at the United Nations conference on trade and employment at Havana. “That policy is to maintain British preferences, and not to subscribe to any agreements or arrangements which involve its abandonment,” Mr Nordmeyer said. “That is the policy on which we based our negotiations at Geneva, and it is still the policy of the Government No member of the British Commonwealth of Nations has been more emphatic on this point than has New Zealand, and no Commonwealth statesman has opposed any suggestion that preferences should be abandoned more vigorously than has Mr Nash. “Mr Haskell Anderson knows perfectly well that there is not the slightest suggestion of abandoning preferences. His organisation was supplied, on November 19, with a full and detailed statement of all the tariff modifications which were negotiated at Geneva, and which we propose to apply if we accept the general agreement of tariff and trade, and he will find no sign there of anv abandonment of ©references. “The cabled report of Mr Nash’s address at Havana is quite obviously a very condensed and disconnected account. and we. are awaiting the full text. In the meantime. I have not the slightest hesitation in stating once again that we adhere strongly to British tariff preference, and that we are not going to abandon it.”