Mr Rowling critical of N.Z. monopolies

Press, 10 November 1981, Page 3

Mr Rowling critical of N.Z. monopolies

. Nelson reporter. The Leader of the Opposition (Mr Rowling) yesterday criticised monopolies in New Zealand and promised antimonopoly legislation to control what he termed the “privileged, rather than private, enterprise.” He told a lunch-time meeting at Takaka that as part of Labour’s stabilisation package some anti-monopoly legislation was essential. “We have growing up in New Zealand, a handful of dominant industries. There have been some great movements in the last week, where Goodmans and Watties have been manoeuvring to see who is going to be the boss-man in the food-process-ing industry,” he said. Each had 35 per cent of the other's shares.

"They won’t stand there. They will have another spar and sooner or later one is going to win. The day that one or other of those companies wins is the day that food processing in this country is in the hands of one company, and that could be very dangerous for the producers who supply the materials for processing and even more dangerous for the consumers who will be at the mercy of a single supply situation,” Mr Rowling said.

“That is not what competition is all about. We thought this present Government believed in competition, but it seems to believe in privi-

leged enterprise rather than private enterprise,” he said. The Labour Party wanted to see that free and private competition had the proper chance to flourish and that people were protected by a competitive system. In this sector, too, State services were being used by the Government to make a profit rather than provide the people with a service at a reasonable cost. He announced that in regions where there was inadequate television or radio coverage, rebates on licences would be made until a full service was provided. Golden Bay was one such area, he said.

Answering a question on Rural Bank lending, Mr Rowling said he was most concerned about the amount of land bought by people who had nothing to do with farming. “They are coming in and buying land; it is a tax-haven for them and it is more noticeable now that horticulture is expanding,” he said. “They have the cash because they have come out of occupations where they got big cash, and they are not worried about the price they pay for it. That puts the price up all round, making it hard for the genuine young person who wants to be a farmer. "It is clear that we must have some deterrent to make sure that those who want to go on to the land are those

who want to make it their livelihood,” he said. Labour would not spend more on health, he said. “We won’t have it. We have to get the • economy straightened out first. But we are concerned about the distribution of the colossal health vote. “We don’t believe we are always getting value for money; we think there is a need for more decentralisation of the health services so that they reach out to where the people are living; we need to spend less on grandiose, multi-storey, ferro-con-crete buildings in the centres of cities,” Mr Rowling said.

“We think there should be less concentration on prestige equipment — where one hospital in the metropolitan area gets a new piece of equipment and every other hospital demands it immediately, irrespective of the cost -- and we should be concentrating a lot more in the field of preventive medicine, such as having health nurses attached on roster to groups of schools,” he said. “I am sure we would save ourselves tens of millions of dollars, probably hundreds of millions, if we had a much more effective system of preventive medicine,” said Mr Rowling.