Timber Merchants Urge Research

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30827, 12 August 1965, Page 14

Timber Merchants Urge Research

v rom Our Own Reporter)

WELLINGTON,August 11. The executive of the Timber Merchants’ Federation, meeting today, gave full support to Dr. S. D. Richardson, director of the Forest Research Institute, in his demand for more timber research.

“It is an extraordinary thing that such a valuable programme, on which depends so much of New Zealand’s overseas effort, should be subject to so many delays,” said the president (Mr H. C. Smart, of Christchurch). “The Government is moving for the introduction of a limited free trade area between Australia and New Zealand, in which New Zealand’s main hope is stated to lie in forest products. At the same time,

the very conservative programme already approved for | timber research is being delayed and circumvented. “After his absence overseas on forest research business, Dr. Richardson might have expected to come back to an atmosphere receptive to his ideas. Instead he has found little done, and a year lost. “He now has to waste valuable time wrestling with accommodation problems for his staff, at the very moment when the free trade problem is being discussed in Canberra. This is surely an example of short-sightedness on the part of a Government which should be doing its best to back research and development in timber products. i “It is only in the improveIment and diversification of our basic timber product that New Zealand stands a chance to gain out of any agreement on trade between the two countries,” Mr Smart said.