The Press WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1963. Development Of Industry

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30233, 11 September 1963, Page 14

The Press WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1963. Development Of Industry

The Tariff and Development Board has produced no simple formula from its painstaking inquiry into the criteria for industrial development in New Zealand. What it has done most competently is to bring together and state general principles that should be well understood but have sometimes been ignored. The report, for instance, makes it clear that the employment a new industry may promise is relatively unimportant or, indeed,

positively disadvantageous if the jobs are filled by buying workers from some other undertaking that is working efficiently. What counts is not work for the sake of work, as in many depression unemployment relief schemes, but work to increase national productivity of useful goods and services. The view of the Government Statistician that “ there is nothing in “ present statistical trends "... to indicate that special “steps will be necessary to “ mop up any excess of “ labour ” is quoted approvingly. An incidental item of information is that every job in primary industry (which must be regarded as of paramount importance) makes two jobs for other persons in processing and distribution.

The board emphasises that the Government’s first responsibility is to create a stable economic climate conducive to development and allowing full play to individual initiative, with a

minimum of detailed control. The Government has no right or obligation to approve or disprove of any proposal on any criteria unless the State is asked to give some special help, such as the granting of extensive import licences while the licensing system persists. And on that question the report comes down heavily in favour of a tariff as the appropriate way to protect New Zealand secondary industries. It supports the Treasury view that in the long run the expansion of exports and not “ import replacement ” is the solution to the balance-of-payments problem. None of this is new; but events of the last few years show that it needs restatement. The board reports that the Department of Industries and Commerce has applied suitable criteria in considering industrial development proposals. It does not explain why the department was able to support such projects as the Nelson cotton mill and the Whangarei glassworks. Possibly the board has been wise not to delve too deeply into past history now that it has the department on record in broad agreement with the criteria established. The ultimate responsibility still rests with Governments. The board and the department may concur in the most detailed prescription; but if a Government is swayed more by political interests than by economic sense their work will be unavailing.