Govt restraints 'long overdue’

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33611, 13 August 1974, Page 14

Govt restraints 'long overdue’

It was nonsense to say that the measures announced last week to restrain Government spending would reduce an expected balance-of-payments deficit of ssoom by s2oom. the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Muldoon) said yesterday.

“The restraints on Government spending are long overdue but they will not reduce our balance-of-payments deficit bv Ssom let alone $200m.”

Indeed, said Mr Muldoon, Mr Rowling’s figure of ssoom was probably about s2oom to light.

Mr Muldoon’s speech, given at the ninety-fifth annual conference of the

Canterbury Manufacturers’ Association, covered the same topics he has made familiar in speeches he has given elsewhere in Christchurch recently. New Zealand was heading for bankruptcy and nothing the Minister of Finance had done so far would stop the headlong plunge, he said. “The Minister cannot borrow his way out of it and he certainly cannot trade his way out of it in today’s circumstances.” Month by month Mr Row!-

ing was putting off the necessity for some kind of Government action and at the same time he was looking around the world to try to borrow some of the Arab oil money. "When that failed, the (Minister was forced to go back to traditional markets and is finding that money is scarce and high-priced.” The country’s greatest problem today was inexperience and prejudice in high places. “Regulations and enactments in the Commerce Bill now before the house make it clear that inside the Government. and to some extent inside the department concerned (Trade and Industry) there are those who believe profit is evil. "Some have not yet learned the lesson that taxes are paid out of profits and the welfare state is financed out of taxes. “Unless healthy business enterprises earn healthy profits there will not be jobs and taxes, a lesson that will be learned the hard way inside the next 12 months.” Mr Muldoon said.