The Press WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 9, 1961. The I.M.F. Debate’

Press, Volume C, Issue 29587, 9 August 1961, Page 14

The Press WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 9, 1961. The I.M.F. Debate’

The Labour Party’s chief spokesman in opposition to New Zealand membership of the International Monetary Fund (Mr Nordmeyer) is expected to speak in the Parliamentary debate today. He should take the opportunity to explain simply the grounds for his party’s attitude; they have not been clear from all the speeches his colleagues have made so far, or from his own earlier speeches.. If the Labour Party really believes that the I.M.F. (though pledged to high levels of employment) would have foisted unemployment on New Zealand but for this country’s alleged freedom to pursue independent economic policies, two questions demand an answer. First, has New Zealand not kept to its specific commitment under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade “to act “. . . in a manner fully “consistent with the prin- " ciples of the fund ”? Second, to whom does the Opposition give the credit for the full employment New Zealand has had for the last decade—to the National Party politicians who were in power for most of the time or to their financial advisers, who have urged successive Governments to join the 1.M.F.? The second question may be the more awkward for Mr Nordmeyer to answer, particularly since his political opponents have at last agreed with experts he respects; but the first is really the more significant. Can Mr Nordmeyer honestly say that this or that breach of New Zealand’s pledged word has contributed to our economic well-being? Yet he must do so if the Labour attack on the empowering bill is to appear as anything more than a bid to win over the self-styled “ mone- “ tary reformers Opposition contributions to the prolonged introduc-

tory and second-reading debates so far have seemed better calculated to fill in the time and to give an impression of strong feeling than to show why New Zealand should not share in this particular agency of international co-operation. Attacks on stock and station agents and charges of great “betrayals” do not really mean very much. When Mr Douglas talked of putting New Zealand in a “strait“jacket” and Mr Deas of putting New Zealand “in “hock” they did not explain how these picturesque phrases were relevant to I.M.F. membership. Presumably Mr Connelly and Mr Kirk were trying to supply the answer when they asserted that New Zealand would have to abolish its import controls while other countries maintained theirs. Have Messrs Connelly and Kirk not read the flat statement in the White Paper that every time New Zealand has intensified import control the I.M.F. has advised G.A.T.T. that the action was no more than necessary to protect overseas reserves? If they disbelieve this they are less likely to dismiss the assurances on this point in the 1944 report by their leader (Mr Nash). Mr Kirk incidentally has done the Government a service by reviving the report that a National Party caucus as recently as last February opposed I.M.F. membership, which sufficiently explains why the subject was not in the party’s policy. Since then, presumably, Government members have realised that in the present situation a policy of stability, as opposed to Labour’s hightaxation policy of 1958, is unlikely to be successful without the support of the 1.M.F., unless New Zealand is again to put its gold “ in “hock” in Wall Street and pay a higher rate of interest.