MRS A. LAWN An advocate of co-operatives

Press, 22 November 1978, Page 32

MRS A. LAWN An advocate of co-operatives

The establishment of cooperatives is seen- by Mrs Anne Lawn, Values candidate for Nelson, as the main answer to the nation’s industrial relations problems. “Then you would have people employing capital instead of capital employing people as we have at the moment,” she says. Such a system, particularly if the workers themselves had shares in it, would produce greater harmony and greater productivity because the workers had a stake in the enterprise, she says. “I’ve seen this happen, to some extent. In one place in which I worked a few years ago, management would lay down the law as to what was to be done, but before I finished, management came to the workers and sought their opinons on the best ways of overcoming various production problems. “It had been said that

co-operatives were pie in the sky, but I know of one instance in Nelson where this is working,” says Mrs Lawn. She considers such ven-

tures could be financed by the Reserve Bank. One excellent example of a field in which cooperatives would work is shipping, she says. The only coastal vessel still

trading on the New Zealand coast is the Titoki between Nelson and Onehunga, and soon this will stop. “I would like to see the coastal shipping reactivated round New Zealand, and it could be done easily in a co-operative way, with ships’ crews and watersiders being shareholders in a co-oper-ative venture. This type of thing would end dis« harmony on the shipping scene,” Mrs Lawn says.

Nelson she sees as a perfect place in which to set up a recycling plant for the producticm of methane from waste and sewage. The incentive for this should come from the Government. “I know this sort of thing is working well in other places throughout the world.” Foreign involvement must be kept out of the fishing industry, says Mrs Law. “This goes back to the co-operative idea again. If co-operatives

were set up, we wouldn't need foreign involvement.” What about all the little shops closing? This is not because of lack of patronage, but because they cannot compete against big

business. Here again, she believes the answer is cooperatives. “Take the little corner store having to close because of big business supermarket competition The people patronising that little store could form a co-operative, buy it, become card holders and ob-

tain their goods at wholesale rates and all others who patronise it pay the usual retail rates. It wouldn’t matter how many people put money into it.” People’s individual freedoms are being eroded year by year as more laws go on the Statute books, says Mrs Lawn. “There’s little doubt about It, we’re on the verge of becoming a police state." She is particularly concerned about the ever-in-creasing rights given lawenforcement and security agencies ro walk into people’s homes without warrants. "I don’t like the telephone tapping, either. Whose telephones are going to be tapped? Nobody knows, except one man, and he doesn’t have to say,” she says. Mrs Lawn is aged SI, and is married. She is totally blind. She is contesting a Genera! Election for the first time.