SENTIMENT IN TRADE

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30156, 13 June 1963, Page 16

SENTIMENT IN TRADE

Mr Wooiertoifs Advice

•The Press" Special Service WELLINGTON. June 12.

New Zealand must cease relying on sentiment in its trade relations with Britain, said Mr R. Woolerton, chairman of the Dominion dairy section of Federated Farmers, in his address to the annual conference of the section in Wellington today. “Gone, it seems, are the days when strong emotional ties played an important part in United Kingdom-New Zealand trade relations,” he said. From now on, we must base our relations mainly on our economic ties.

"It is a time when N-ew Zealand requires the very best negotiators to look after our trading interests. These people must be possessed of ability and vision to plead our case and promote opportunities for the sale of our produce in the markets of the world,” said Mr Woolerton.

To overcome the problems ahead of such industries as the dairy industry there was as great a need as ever for fearless leadership. There was a great need for a reappraisal of economic policies. An economic climate more sympathetic to those industries, whose earnings mainly determined the living standards of the people was needed in New Zealand, he said.

“Too often we witness the spectacle of policy-makers admitting that a certain decision would be of great help to, say, the farming industry in its attempts to expand output, but that it might be potentially unpopular. Hence no action is taken. We want leaders who are prepared to tell the people the facts, determine a policy that will increase the economic welfare of our nation and, finally, have the fortitude to put the policy into operation,” Mr Woolerton said.

“In spite of all the words that have been spoken recently about New Zealand’s development, we still remain an economy dependent on exports, which must expand if we are to survive economically. "Historians have suggested that the time may arrive, in the foreseeable future, when someone will have to write the story of the decline and fall of the British Empire. Even if this occurs, let it never be said that the story will ever be able to be written of New Zealand's decline and fall. "Yet the world is full of skeletons of once great countries who never intended consciously to fade. “The problems of our great industry are New Zealand's also. Let us all put our energies and abilities together so that future historians can write about the remarkable development of the New Zealand economy in the twentieth century,” said Mr Woolerton.