Country Party Attacks Economic Policies

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31902, 1 February 1969, Page 14

Country Party Attacks Economic Policies

"The New Zealand Country Party feels that even the most die-hard Government supporter must be forced to agree that the National Government’s economic policies are still based on the theories of such economists as Dr W. B. Sutch, a former Secretary of Industries and Commerce,” the president of the Country Party (Mr T. M. F. Taylor) said yesterday. Mr Taylor was commenting on the statement by the Minister of Industries and Commerce (Mr Marshall) on the assembly of cars, and remarks by the Minister of Agriculture (Mr Taiboys) at the Opening of the Lake County Agricultural and Pastoral Association’s show.

Mr Taylor said that he congratulated “The Press” on its initiative in seeking a statement from Mr Marshall and that he strongly supported the Dominion president of Federated Farmers (Mr P. S. Plummer) and the president of the New Zealand Auto-

mobile Association (Mr J. B. Horrocks). “I would prefer that we face the facts in this nation, and, in the interests of our consumers, buy from overseas those products where economies of scale are important and confine our industrial ventures to those products appropriate to the size of the market and to the availability of raw materials here in New Zealand,” he said. “At first sight it might appear, as is often contended by the advocates of self-suffi-ciency and economic nationalism, that it would be in New Zealand’s interest to produce in New Zealand not only a greater variety of the goods and services we use but a greater New Zealand content. Czech Economist “However, that which is physically possible is not always economically desirable. As Professor Ota Slk, the well-known Czechoslovak economist and one of the leading lights in economic reform in that nation until the Russian occupation, said: ‘At present (1966) we produce 78 per cent of the total world spectrum of types of machinery. This is impossible for a small country.’

“His economic policies led to the closing of about 3000 factories and led to the specialisation of those products which they could make at a realistic world price,” said Mr Taylor. As Professor Sik is at present out of a -job because of the Russian intervention he might well be employed as an economic adviser to the New Zealand Government. for its economic policies have led to New Zealand’s deteriorating relative position in the toorld. “This was shown by Dr K. B. Cumberland, of Auckland, in an address in Christchurch in November, 1966, when he said that 30 years ago only two countries surpassed New Zealand in per capita industrial production, and that today New Zealand no' longer appeared among the top 20. “Is it any wonder,” said Mr Taylor, “that the ordinary Kiwi can no longer afford a new motor-car and has to make do with an increasingly aged and expensive secondhand one? It is such Government economic policies that the .New Zealand Country Party was formed to fight.”