'Young industry’ call

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32777, 30 November 1971, Page 22

' Young industry’ call

(N.Z. Press Association)

PALMERSTON

NORTH, Nov. 28.

Opportunities for young people to start their own business and industries as a counter to the selling of New Zealand to foreign countries were called for by Mr J. A. Walding, Labour member of Parliament for Palmerston North.

Mr Walding, talking to the Institute of Food Science and Technology, called the National Development Conference a flop. He said the Development Finance Corporation should help young people to start new industries. Finance should be provided at reasonable rates of interest. Calculated risk was a prerequisite for progress, he said.

Young men with initiative, skill, and knowledge should

be given the opportunity to start their own businesses.

In the past the country had benefited because the resources of the State had enabled young men to own a farm with the minimum amount of starting capital. “Why cannot we do the same for the skilled technologist, the skilled manager, the skilled tradesman” he asked.

“Why should not he be given the resources to start a business of his own if it is in the national interest? The criteria to be used to decide who is to be in charge of New Zealand industry should be decided not by personal wealth, but on capacity.” Explaining his suggestion today, Mr Walding said that in the past, when New Zealand’s wealth had relied solely on its agricultural production, young men had been given the chance to buy farms with a minimum of their own capital. Today, in a changing world, where the swing was to industry, young men of New Zealand should be given the same opportunity. Four years ago New Zealand was fourth in the official world rate of average national income. Today it was fourteenth, and still dropping; and this! from 30 years ago when it enjoyed the highest standard of living in the world.

Twenty years ago, the Japanese had had a lower standard of living than New Zealand’s. World authorities estimated that by 1980 Japan would surpass New Zealand. “Well, she won’t,” Mr Walding said. “There’s going to be a change within New Zealand.”

Present policies would ensure the continuation of the commercial colonisation that, in the past, had prevented New Zealand’s manufacturing industries from developing. The nation was being stripped of too much of its natural resources in longterm contracts at prices

which, in a few years, would be regarded as bargains. New Zealand must give its trained people the maximum opportunity to use their skills and knowledge for the benefit of the nation.

Firms needed skilled people and must be given incentives, not only to employ those people but to use their skills and incentives. Small firms must be assisted to expand.