Promotion assn told to promote

Press, 1 May 1978, Page 2

Promotion assn told to promote

A call for more aggression by the South bland Promotion Association has been made by the Labour member of Parliament for Avon (Mrs M. D. Batchelor). "The South Island Promotion Association is seen by too many as a nice, well meaning body that holds a pleasant conference once a year but does not have any teeth and achieves very little.” she told the annual conference of the association at the week-end. “For the sake of the South Island, that must change.” Mrs Batchelor said. “The South Island has vital interests which must be protected. I assure you from personal experience that the Auckland Parliamentary lobby > ,orks very hard to get what it wants; it seems to me that the South Island should do the same.” The association was well I placed to co-ordinate action and make South Island!

views known, she said. “I urge you to raise your profile, and get stuck in. The choice is clear: if we continue to waft along, bleating occasionally about the collapse of an occasional service. we will get nowhere. “It is only by launching a well founded, professionally backed campaign that we will be able to ensure that the interests of this, the largest island, are protected.” Speaking about Labour Partv programmes for regional development, Mrs Batchelor said that the aim would be to extract the greatest possible value from primary products. “If we processed ever' lamb through to finish 1 cuts we would earn an exti 5200. M in overseas exchange, and the same goes for wool,” she said. I “Every year, thousands of bales of greasy wool go overseas. It has been esti-

mated that if every bale of greasy wool was processed to at least yarn stage we would earn an extra S6OOM in overseas exchange.” A similar situation applied to the tanning industry. “We have the raw materials to make top leather products, and we have a tanning factory, but w r e continue to send slightly processed skins overseas for other people to make into leather/’

Increased exports were the key to New Zealand’s economic salvation, but regional development was much more than just freight subsidies and factories, said Mrs Bathelor.

“Regional development is ibout the development of balanced communities, with adequate schooling, health, and transport facilities — places in which people want to live and bring up families,” she said.