Labour Party Provisionally Approves Financial Policy

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27962, 8 May 1956, Page 14

Labour Party Provisionally Approves Financial Policy

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, May 7. The reimposition of price control on those items where, since the abolition of control, “the public are being exploited” is recommended in a special report from a finance committee provisionally adopted at the annual conference at Wellington today of the New Zealand Labour Party. The committee also suggested that price control be abandoned on those lines where genuine competition existed and where price control was serving no useful purpose. The committee said that although over-all price control was neither necessary nor administratively practicable, the party should state clearly that its policy would be to retain price control in those fields and on those items where the consumer needed protection. The committee members were the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Nash), and Messrs R. Boord, M.P., W. A. Fox, M.P., A. H. Nordmeyer, M.P., G. A. Hansen, E. H. Langford, F. P. Walsh, A. J. McDonald, and M. Moohan, M.P., president of the Labour Party. The report also recommended that the credit and currency policy of the party as submitted to the electors during the 1954 General Election campaign be endorsed as a fundamental principle of Labour’s objective to make the State the sole authority for the issue of credit and currency, the public credit to be used to the fullest extent compatible with the public good. Private trading banks, the report said,

gave an essential service, and should be maintained. In the event of a fall in overseas income because of lower prices for New Zealand’s exports. Reserve Bank credit should, where necessary, be used to maintain full employment and guaranteed prices. The report recommended the party to undertake to put into operation a scheme to ensure that when small savings were withdrawn they would be worth at least the same amount of purchasing power as when lodged. The proposal in the party’s last election programme to set up a local bodies’ finance corporation should be restated, the committee said. The corporation should work in conjunction with the Local Government Loans Board and the Capital Issues Committee, its main responsibility being to ensure that finance was available for all approved local body issues. One of the first steps which the next Labour government should take would be to reduce interest rates progressively, so as to lessen the burden on taxpayers. ratepayers. and mortgagors, the committee said. Import selection and exchange control, the committee recommended, should be employed to make certain that the country’s commitments for overseas debt were met and exchange accounts kept in balance. Overseas borrowing should be reduced to a minimum, so that there would be nfi need to join the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank.