Small businesses urged to lobby

Press, 21 June 1980, Page 18

Small businesses urged to lobby

PA Auckland Small and medium-sized businesses suffered first and most from inroads into the principles of the freemarket economy; large companies had a wide range of possibilities to intercept the additional risks, but smaller businesses did not.

The Enterprise New Zealand three-day convention, sponsored by the Chambers of Commerce, was informed of these facts by the first of several guest speakers from overseas, Dr Eva Odehnal, director of a 5000-member-strong West German association of owner-entrepre-neurs.

She put a strong case for small businesses forming a lobby to campaign for their rights in the face of competition from larger business and increasing interference in business by Government bureaucrats.

She argued equally strongly that countries need and must encourage such business.

Dr Odehnal pointed out that, far from being obsolete, small and medium business had become increasingly necessary in the present economic structure because it provided a more personal and better service to the consumer, aided decentralisation, kept the door open for new businesses to be established, offered a great variety of fob opportunities and especially for the young, reinvested profits willingly, and often was the innovator of new ideas and products. She said this was not to deny the value of big business — “We need both, and, as long as we manage to keep the relation in a healthy balance, all is well.” Bureaucracy was the most serious of the dangers which faced small business. Bureaucrats were inclined to ignore that sector’s requirements.

“It is not coincidence they (the bureaucrats) prefer large companies as a model and a partner,” she said. “They speak very much the same language; but a bureaucrat and the owner of a small business have hardly anything in common.” Delivering the keynote address earlier, the convention chairman, Mr R. B.

Weir, chief executive of Crown Consolidated, Ltd, strongly attacked what he saw as increasing bureaucratic interference in private enterprise. He said: “Concerned New Zealanders — and there are many here today — are alarmed at the drift away from the freedoms and economic standards which built i this country. I state quite I categorically that private or I free enterprise as we have' known it is in jeopardy.

“We must return to a system where people can think clearly and decide they are not going to have a gigantic state machine providing all the inputs, the opportunities,' most of the jobs, the enter-: taining, sporting and recreational activities, super- ■ annuation — the lot. We are; sick to death of creeping; socialism, a disease which! could bleed this country dry. I

l “Governments have forced on the business community burdens which should never have been accepted. And today business is being asked to accept a great many social responsibilities which are completely nonproductive. “The profitability of a great many businesses is I being squeezed relentlessly out by the system — by a continuation of those forces which, of course, destroy the ability of companies to employ staff. “Small business has a vital role to play as the backbone of . economic efficiency and social stability, but such businesses today are finding it extremely difficult to keep going in the face of demands being made upon them by bureaucrats. “Only business, and people involved in it, provide this nation’s wealth. Most government expenditure is for the redistribution of wealth, not its production. The production of wealth is the essential function of private enterprise.”

Businessmen, said Mr Weir, must get this message “over to the public.” They must outline what they contributed to the good of society, how they did it and under what conditions they could continue to do it.

I Profit, which could proivide incentive, was being ! eroded inexorably “to a I point of nothingness