Mr Birch defends Govt job estimates

Press, 4 June 1984, Page 7

Mr Birch defends Govt job estimates

PA Chateau Tongariro The Government’s 1981 election claim that 410,000 jobs would be produced by “think big” projects was defended by the Minister of Energy, Mr Birch, on Saturday. He said the development of new industries such as liquefied natural gas, compressed natural gas, and synthetic petrol, and the expansion of the steel and aluminium industries, would mean a net gain of $l5OO million a year in foreign exchange earnings. . “That is where those jobs are going to come from,” he said in an address to the Young Nationals conference. “What we said in 1981 is that based on the foreign exchange that our growth strategy will produce ... and bearing in mind the traditional conversion of $1 million to 160 jobs, we will see a growth of 410,000 jobs. Not by this year, as our opponents would claim, but by the end of the decade. “We are on track for producing those foreign exchange earnings. They will produce jobs. We cannot say precisely that it is going to be 410,000. What we can say is that historically $1 million extra in foreign exchange broadly produces 160 new jobs. Mr Birch said the foreign

exchange earnings predicted in 1981 would be received by 1990. The member of Parliament for Fendalton, Mr Philip Burdon, suggested to the conference that stricter measures be used to monitor regulations that Government departments wanted to introduce. Parliament had abdicated too much authority to departmental officials to implement legislation by regulations, he said. He said he was concerned about “the power of Government departments to feed in regulations with a farreaching and profound effect in a manner that can avoid any direct accountability to Parliament.” “Certainly the reflex action of most Government departments appears to be that if there is a complaint or a loophole in the authority that a particular bill may have given them, their response is to attempt to bring down the appropriate regulations to control the area of authority that they believe themselves to have.” Mr Burdon said he woud like to see a tighter procedure for monitoring the regulations of Government departments. “The procedure is too

loose and clearly it requires a very firm Minister to control a departmental momentum,” he said.