PARLIAMENT Minister Lists Decisions On Industrial Proposals

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29273, 3 August 1960, Page 14

PARLIAMENT Minister Lists Decisions On Industrial Proposals

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, August 2. The Government had implemented 15 recommendations of the industrial development conference in the eight weeks since the conference, the Minister of Industries and Commerce (Mr Holloway) said in the House of Representatives tonight. Mr Holloway was the principal Government speaker in the Budget debate today.

He said that seven of the conference recommendations had been carried out before the Budget, and eight in the Budget.

Recommendations implemented before the Budget were:— Delicensing of industry; encouragement for assisted immigration of skilled workers; strengthening of export services and access to markets; increased margins for skill in the Public Service; power concessions to encourage Industry; transport improvement and concessions to industry for rail freight; and extension of educational facilities and increased grants tor research. Mr Holloway listed recommendations carried out in the Budget as:—Depreciation allowances; changes in capital issues control; revision of tariffs; bank advances for industrial equipment; incentives for forestry development; amendments to profits retention provisions; encouragement to small savings and increase in insurance allowances; and encouragement to the arts. An early speaker when the debate was resumed today, Mr T. P. Shand (Opposition, Marlborough), said that since the depression of the ’thirties it had become the responsibility of governments all over the world to manage not only government finance but nations’ economic resources of labour and capital in all their forms. This heavy responsibility required governments to have great powers—far greater powers than would have been considered satisfactory before the great depression. Capital Development New Zealand’s problem of providing capital for future development was far greater than that in any of the developed countries of the world. It was necessary for New Zealand to set aside a substantial proportion of its national income for capital expansion, and if the Government failed to create conditions under which this could be done it failed to live up to its responsibilities.

In the Budget it was stated that the investment rate of 22 per cent of the national income could not be maintained because of the recession in export prices, but the total export earnings for 1958 were only £2m below the record, and on top of that the Government had borrowed £44m overseas. Mr Shand said that there was a deficit in the Public Accounts for last year of £ 18.5 m, which would come from the Reserve Bank, and the consequent inflation would hit the wage • earners and beneficiaries from one end of the country to the other. A sum of £llBm in overseas exchange was not much to show (compared with £U3m in June, 1957) for record overseas earnings, savage taxation, disruption of Industry, and falling income for almost all the people, said Mr Shand.

The Minister of Industries and Commerce said the keynote of the

speech of the Deader of the Opposition was that New Zealand had never been more prosperous, yet Mr Shand had contended the wage earner was worse off and social beneficiaries were no better off than they were before. “I suppose the story Is that the country is more prosperous but -the people who live in it are not," said Mr Holloway He said it was not just capital investments or taxes that governed the people's standard of living. He thought they had to take the rate of production of goods into account. The history of the last

few years showed the rate of production was increasing year by year. Mr Hollaway considered that one of the biggest factors to emerge from the industrial development conference was that there was no point of disagreement and only a marginal fringe of difference on how they were going to achieve ultimate production aims. Mr Holloway said the Government had shared the burden of Government expenditure fairly among all sections of the community, and had shared Budget concessions fairly, too. Mr Holloway said that manufacturers would be concerned at a statement earlier in the Budget debate by Mr G. A. Walsh (Opposition, Tauranga) that the National Party would reduce tariffs. Mr Walsh, whom he described as a “senior member of the National shadow cabinet,” had let the cat out of the bag, he said. The National Party’s policy had declared it would use tariffs to protect New Zealand manufacturing, Mr Holloway said. “Manufacturers will look at these conflicting statements with some concern,” he added. Department of Trade Mr Holloway attacked the National Party’s policy to establish a separate department of trade. “Our internal growth goes hand in hand with external trade. If you break Industries and Commerce into two separate departments you’ll have each trying to push its own barrow and fighting each other. It would be a retrograde step to establish a separate department of trade,” he said. Mr Holloway said that the leaders of Federated Farmers were doing everything they could to talk the country out of industrial development. Mr W. S. Goosman (Opposition, Piako) said that the job of Federated _ Farmers was to represent the primary industry, .which was the foundation of the country’s economy, to ensure that the primary industry was not overloaded and made uneconomic. The National Party realised, of course, that the manufacturing industries had to be expanded. Mr Goosman described the 1960 Budget as more hopeful than those of the last two years. “But it is more meagre in its reduction of taxation than many people expected,” he said. Mr Goosman maintained that it was the private sector of the community that brought prosperity to the country .and said it was the responsibility of the Government to set the climate for it.