No Other Agreements Being Examined, Says Minister

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

No Other Agreements Being Examined, Says Minister

(From Our Own Reporter)

WELLINGTON, January 15.

The Minister of Industries and Commerce (Mr Marshall) said today there were no other agreements between industry and the Government under examination and there were no plans to restudy them, as had been done with the Nelson cotton mill pact. The implications of the cotton mill put it in a class of its own, he said. The only other of the "secret’’ agreements on major industries made by the Labour Government since to have been dropped was one for a £2 million copper plant at Auckland. Imperial Chemical Industries (New Zeaalnd), Ltd., wanted to -aise product prices written into the agreement. The National Government refused to agree. Local felt and textile plants and woollen mills today

offered to hire workers originally engaged for the cotton mill, and now jobless. Mr Marshall said work would be offered to these people. Both the Government and the cotton mill promoters are expected to help with arrangements for employment.

Accountants and lawyers have already begun preparing for the winding-up of the Commonwealth Fabric Corporation and for the settlement of compensation claims on the Government. The first step will be for the State to acquire the paid capital in the corporation. This will be done within the next month.

There is no present intention of instituting an inquiry, formal or informal, into the making of the agreement for the Nelson venture, according to senior Government sources The Government believes it already knows everything that is to be discovered about how the agreement was made and that a further inquiry is. therefore, unnecessary. It is understood there were variations from the normal administrative procedure in the making of an agreement and that, in particular, the original agreement was not given to the Crown Law Office for prior study.

The decision to void the pact resulted from rank-and-file Government opinion in caucus last week.

After six weeks of solid discussions, committees of officials and of Cabinet Ministers had made little progress toward persuading the company men to agree to a major rewriting of p-otection guarantees and price clauses in the document. The Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake) advanced the first National Party caucus of the year a week to report to members. Caucus opinion on Friday that unless the Government allowed the venture to proceed without modification the company must ba bought out was subsequently endorsed at a brief special Cabinet meeting, the second in two days. That night Mr Holyoake called in the directors of the firm and told them of the decision. They cabled the decision to their British principals, and then returned to Mr Holyoake’s suite. The agreement for compensation was finally signed on Saturday. Asked today why Mr J. P. Lewin, Assistant Secretary of Industries and Commerce, who is in charge of the department’s Industrial Develop ment Division who was widely believed to have played a leading role in formulating the original cotton mill agreement, had not been present in the final talks, Mr Marshall said Mr Lewin “had no contribution to make at that stage.”