Trade Talks Reason For Australian Minister’s Visit

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29271, 1 August 1960, Page 12

Trade Talks Reason For Australian Minister’s Visit

(Neto Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, July 31. “I once slept in New Zealand but I’ve not. yet seen it,” the Deputy-Prime Minister of Australia and Minister for Trade (Mr John McEwen) said on his arrival in Wellington on Saturday. He explained that he slept at Whenuapai airport aboard a military aircraft when, as an Australian delegate to the San Francicso conference to establish the United Nations, he passed through Auckland in 1946. “Whereas the New Zealand Prime Minister and other Ministers have visited Australia a number of times and we have had trade and economic talks, I have never until now found it possible to accept an invitation to come to New Zealand,” Mr McEwen said. Leader of the Parliamentary Country Party and a farmer, he was greatly interested in New Zealand agriculture, Mr McEwen said. Growing seed for New Zealand under contract to Wright.

Stephenson and Company had been his special link with the Dominion. On his mixed farm in Victoria he grows, grass and clover seed, raises’ fat lambs, grows wheat and runs beef cattle on an irrigated section. On his forthcoming talks with Government officials on trade matters of mutual interest. Mr McEwen said: “New Zealand is our fifth or sixth biggest customer. We are quite sure that with Australian industrial development increasing apace there will be a growing channel for New Zealand goods, especially as we have virtually abolished licensing restrictions. “New Zealand salesmanship of sawn timber for instance is paying off in our building boom and I can see no reason why the sales cannot further expand.”

Other items flowing into Australia from New Zealand were newsprint, dairy equipment, fish and even clothing and washing machines, he said. “From our side refined oil, sugar, dried fruits and manufactured goods are important exports to New Zealand and about half our trade with New Zealand is in steel It has always been an obligation with us to supply steel products to New Zealand even when we were short enough to be importing ourselves.” A broader issue in which the Minister of Finance (Mr Nordmeyer) and he had been mutually interested at the Montreal trade and economic conference of Cammonwealth countries was the importance to Australia and New Zealand of international price levels of bulk commodities exports remaining stable. “This has been a very coalescing policy for the main countries of the Commonwealth which rely on the export of bulk commodities. For both Australia and New Zealand, the United Kingdom is the biggest export market and we are mutually interested in the development of the trading field in Europe.”