“Trade Agreement Not Short-term Salvation”

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31319, 15 March 1967, Page 6

“Trade Agreement Not Short-term Salvation”

There was no sense in believing that in the short term, salvation would come through the New Zealand-Aus-tralia trade agreement, said Sir Walter Scott, governing director of an Australian firm of international management consultants, in Christchurch yesterday. Addressing the Canterbury Division of the New Zealand Institute of Management, he said he did not doubt that both countries would benefit in the longer term. “But in the short term, I think not,” he said. “Solutions that involve deep economic and political problems are never solved overnight.”

Sir Walter Scott said some progress could be made and some solutions propounded, but not those which promised most for each of the two countries. Yet in the long run much good could come from economic participation and partnership. Discussing what should be done “in the short run,” Sir Walter Scott said both New Zealand and Australia should remember that every ideology and every country depended for its real progress on productivity. “In the case of Australia, and I suspect, of New Zealand, our increase in productivity is not nearly good enough,” he said. “Let us both remember that we export or die, and this is no cliche. Either we export

or our place among the affluent countries becomes forfeit and our position jeopardised.” Sir Walter Scott said we should also remember that any salvation for the respective countries began with ourselves.

“Fir <r ’;, we must do very much better many of the things we do now,” he said. "This ij one of the best ways of reducing costs and thus improving our competitive I abilities.” Australia had been told that inferior quality was costing A4OO million dollars a year, of which it ought to save A2OO million dollars a year. On a population basis, assuming New Zealand was no more efficient than Australia, this would amount to about A5O million dollars a year, or 1N.Z.20 million every five years.

“I have no patience with people who say there is not much we can do,” Sir Walter Scott added. “We must not be overawed by the fact we are small countries,” he said, referring to the way in which Switzerland and Sweden had developed their economies and exploited their opportunities. Both countries also had a great storehouse of wealth in their knowledge which was readily saleable in the markets of the world. “Often none of us know our own strengths,” he added. “Some of your organisations are exporting goods to Hong Kong and Tokyo, competing successfully with local production. And you are outcompeting Australia in other markets in the East What is

being done by some can be done by others.”

He emphasised that Uns was the responsibility of management, and added that more was learned in difficult periods than in easy ones. “With the right attitude of mind, we emerge from the trying times stronger than when we entered,” Sir Walter Scott said.