COTTON MILL PACT NEGOTIATIONS

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29722, 16 January 1962, Page 10

COTTON MILL PACT NEGOTIATIONS

Mr Holloway Accepts Responsibility

(From Our Own Reporter) WELLINGTON, January 15. Mr P. N. Holloway, former Minister of Industries and Commerce, today accepted full responsibility for the 1960 Nelson cotton mill pact. Breaking a silence he has maintained during months of dispute over the agreement, Mr Holloway said, “I was fully responsible for it.”

Mr Holloway defended Industries and Commerce Department heads from criticism for the conclusion of the treaty. “There is no department,” he declared, “which has worked harder during the last decade and there are no officers of the Crown more dedicated to the people and to the development of New Zealand. “Those persons who question their integrity must, I believe, examine their own motives.”

The former Minister, who signed the document for the Labour Government, denied that its negotiation had been carried out independently by departmental staff. “I took part in negotiations over several months before the agreement was finally entered into.”

Mr Holloway said he could not recall whether or not the Crown Law Office had been consulted. He did not think so. “That was certainly not the usual practice with these agreements. The Crown Law Office has not the staff to keep up with agreements of this sort.”

Mr Holloway said he thought the latest decision to end the agreement and to pay compensation to the mill promoters would cause all

potential private investors in New Zealand from overseas to consider the possibility that such action might also be taken against them. No major industry could develop in New Zealand without some form of State protection. “This has happened in such major industries as pulp and paper and, in particular, in regard to the garment trade, which gets the maximum of protection, ’without which it would not exist for five minutes,” he said. Asked about suggestions that a full judicial inquiry be held into circumstances surrounding the conclusion of the pact, Mr Holloway said: “It is the Government’s responsibility to hold its own inquiries. A public inquiry of any sort could possibly result in other blossoming industries

being subjected to the same treatment. “This would, in my view, merely extend the damage already done.” Mr flolloway said he had had no communication with the mill sponsors since he retired from politics in November, 1960. Mr Holloway is now New Zealand agent for the GreekAustralia Shipping Line.