COMMUNIST POLICY

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30289, 15 November 1963, Page 17

COMMUNIST POLICY

Mr BlacUoek At Linwood

Four children under 12 years, seven dogs, two youths sitting on motor-cycles, a woman and two youngsters in a luxury car and four persons wearing gardening clothes attended an open-air election meeting of the Communist Party candidate for Avon, Mr R. Blacklock, at the corner of Pages and Buckileys reads lest evening. When Mr Blacklock packed up bis public address system to go home at 7,43 pm.—•three-quarters of an hour after he started—his audience had dwindled to nothing. The two motor-cyclists stayed two minutes. The women, who did not get out of her luxury car. stayed five minutes: the children came and went, being mere content to play with the seven dogs: and the four home gardeners stayed till near the end.

“My audience tonight is the worst I have had so far,” Mr Blacklock said. He urged New Zealanders to take over control of foreign monopolies in New Zealand; nationalisation of the trading banks, insurance, stock and station and finance companies; and the building of a New Zealand shipping line now. “Plundering Wealth” To give the workers in New Zealand a better deal, it was necessary to eliminate both home-grown monopolies and foreign investors who were stripping the country. “Monopolies are robbing and plundering all the wealth of the hard work of the New Zealand people,” he said. Total exports of New Zealand in 1963 were roughly £3OO million, Mr Bliacklock said. Out of this came £l3 million interest on overseas loans. Another £2O million went on remittances to overseas investors. About £33 million was spent on shipping transport. All this, he said, meant that of the £3OO million, some £66 million was appropriated by overseas monopolies. "Overseas monopolies appropriate 22 per cent, of our overseas earnings,” he said. Shipping freights for lamb from New Zealand to the United Kingdom market cost £9 million a year, said Mr Blacklock. This meant it cost 3Jd per lb to transport lamb to England. The P. and O Line, he said, had doubled its shipping rates between 1939 and 1955. Since then the line had increased rates again by another 35 per cent. "Yet this line paid a dividend of £5.200,000 profit in 1981,” said Mr Blacklock. Soviet Petrol A call to fight monopolies was made by Mr Blacklock. Home-grown monopolies, he said, were working in with American monopolies to keep petrol prices up, If New Zealand bought petrol from Russia, it would be much cheaper. New Zealand had "knocked back” the opportunity for a Skoda car factory, to be built in Christchurch. “If you want cheaper cars and if you want better cars, you had better fight monopolies now,” he said. He estimated that 250,006 additional young people would be requiring jobs in New Zealand in the next four years. They could not be absorbed into New Zealand agriculture, which meant that most would have to go into industry. Unless there were new markets found quickly there would be no jobs in industry waiting for them. “What is needed is the establishment of long-term trading agreements with the 1,060-million person market of the Socialist countries,” he said. ■'They represent onethird of mankind.”