Policy To Stimulate Industry In South

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30479, 29 June 1964, Page 3

Policy To Stimulate Industry In South

(N Z. Press Association) DUNEDIN, June 28. The next Labour Government would cooperate with local interests and utilise the facilities of an industrial finance corporation and the rental factory scheme to stimulate desirable regional development, the president of the Labour Party (Mr N. E. Kirk) said in Dunedin on Saturday. Speaking at a conference

dinner of the Otago-South-land branch of the party, Mr Kirk outlined a policy to counteract the low growth rate of cities such as Dunedin, and to stop the “drift to the north”.

It would not be a bad thing if, when foreign investors were authorised to start a new industry here, they were given , a “nudge” towards the areas which needed them most, he said. The problem in Dunedin had been that, in spit of the “almost heroic” loc’l efforts, the growth rate had been too slow.

Although Dunedin employed 6.44 per cent of New

Zealand’s labour- force, it gained only 3.43 per cent of the nation’s total labour force increase last year. In comparison, Lower Hutt, which employed a comparable number of factory . workers, gained 1D.05 per cent of the increase in the total national labour' force. Given a comparable growth rate, this would give the ordinary Dunedin wage-earner an average increase of £64 a year. With a labour force of 43,400, the total gain in average earnings to Dunedin would be £2,717,000. But without radical changes in Government policy, the attainment of such a growth rate was a long way off. The

slow growth rate also contributed to the fact that the average hourly pay in Dunedin was 3d below the national average. This represented a. loss of £26 a year. The present Government’s attitude- to the situation was one of indifference. Recently the Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake) had said his Government had no proposal before it to arrest the drift of industry and population to the north, said Mr Kirk. The Labour Party’s plan for a balanced development was not to develop the south at the expense of the north, but to build up the productive capacity of New Zealand as a whole.