Positive Planning Held Essential To N.Z. Growth

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29829, 23 May 1962, Page 12

Positive Planning Held Essential To N.Z. Growth

Positive, long-term planning that set goals and incentives to a private enterprise economy was advocated by the Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake) in a speech to the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce last evening. He told members at a dinner in his honour that New Zealand had one of the lowest growth rates in the world, and that long-term planning was associated with considerable increases in the economic growth of such countries as Japan, France and Italy which had outstripped the growth rate of the United States, Britain and New Zealand.

“H we want to hold our position as a country with one of the highest living standards in the world, we will have to pull up our socks,” said the Prime Minister. New Zealand must now go out to find new markets for which the future lay in Asia and Africa, he said. The Dominion' must diversify its production so that manufacturers played a greater part in earning export income and, to permit businessmen to plan as far ahead as possible, the Government must undertake long-term planning and co-ordinated economic development. The Prime Minister said that he would face the risk of having his speech held up against him in Parliament, but the planning he had in mind was not the negative kind of which there was too much in New Zealand at present. The Government had to plan more than a year ahead, though it did this in some cases already. “The question we must now ask ourselves is whether the existing machinery in this country is adequate for present day needs and, if not, in what way it should be changed," said Mr Holyoake. He commended the operation of the Monetary and Economic Council which had been established to give good guidance in long-term planning, and he quoted the examples of other countries which had set up machinery for economic planning within the framework of private enterprise. “The idea is to achieve maximum growth and as balanced a development as you can get,” said the Prime Minister. “This is done by industry and government getting together and discussing

future plans. There has to be a plan for growth in each sector and a combined plan for the whole economy.” The national targets that were set in such planning were always more ambitious than in any pre-planning era, said Mr Holyoake, but attention was focused on them and they were a spur and a guide to all concerned. Farmers and businessmen could act with the certain knowledge of what lay ahead, and the Government, with private enterprise, could determine its investment and its budgetting in a much better fashion. Fluctuations in the economy had been familiar and unwelcome to businessmen and these had derived in considerable part from New Zealand’s limited range of exports concentrated on one market, Britain. Governments had done what they could, but economic growth had been unsteady. The National Government could certainly have corrected the country’s economic imbalance by violently reducing imports, fierce credit control, and sharp tax increases. he said. But the cost would have been great to business, to wage and salary earners.

Economists and accountants could show remedies for the economy, he said, “but a member of government, a Parliamentarian knows that he is dealing with human material. “Some scribes have written that the Government has lacked decision. I think that the real courage a man can have is to take a line in contradiction of the experts. It is easy to say that when your decision turns out to be right ... as it does. Our policies are working out bet-

ter than I had hoped in 1961, when I announced them. “I am and always have been firmly opposed to any form of planning which is simply another name for bureaucratic control. I am not talking of that kind of planning at all. I am opposed to telling people what they can do and what they cannot do. This form of control is completely repugnant and alien to the New Zealand way of life,” the Prime Minister said. He told the chamber .that New Zealand was on the threshold of a great industrial development. “I don’t know that enough of us have seen the vision.”