Multi-nationals ‘call for local caution’

Press, 21 July 1980, Page 10

Multi-nationals ‘call for local caution’

Mult i-national companies warrant absolute and continuous local vigilance, a visiting American urban planner and Fulbright scholar has said. Dr Myles Rademan said in Hamilton that anyone who understood multi-na-tional companies and the scale of projects they proposed, and was- not concerned, should rethink the position. Dr Rademan is director of town planning at Crested Butte, Colorado, and for several years had had dealings with Amax. a multi-national with mining proposals in that area. Amax is one of thee multi-nationals with interest in the Coromandel area. Dr Rademan is in New Zealand as Fulbright visiting lecturer in the geography department at Massey University. "I am not saying that people need to picket or be against multi-nationals — it could be that the. kind if industrialisation they propose is needed.

But it is necessary to define through intelligent dialogue whether their proposals are in the national interest, and this takes some time.” Dr Rademan said nobody should be misled by the small size of the .companies operating in New Zealand — they were big undertakings which operated on a scale unfamiliar to most New Zealanders. The framework for deci-sion-making was changed, and if the national interest was to be served there was a need to understand the framework being dealt with. “It is incumbent on. people making decisions, who are talking about national development policies, to understand and how •-

licies, to undertand how the multi-national corporation works, how it makes decisions, who the direc* tors are, who they are beholden to, where the products will go, and what kind of a deal New Zealand will get,’ he said.