Industrial aims

Press, 28 January 1986, Page 16

Industrial aims

Sir, — P. A. Van Dugteren’s assertion that “under Labour... we shall continue on the road to bankruptcy” is unfortunately true. Politicians of both main parties grossly under-esti-mate the seriousness of our problems. Their belief that some variation of orthodox ideas can solve them is tragically pathetic. The Government's willingness to sell even the land to foreigners is madness. We are repeating the mistake the Maoris made. As our farmers go bankrupt, it is the Japanese who are most likely to buy the land up cheap. They will naturally want the right to bring Japanese managers to New Zealand to supervise unreliable New Zealand labourers. As the New Zealand Government’s financial crisis deepens, a few Japanese loans will smooth the way for the replacement of easy-going Kiwis by more efficient Japanese. About the year 2060 some pakehas may take up arms to fight but, as in 1860, it will then be too late. — Yours, etc.,

MARK D. SADLER. January 26, 1986.

Sir, — P. A. Van Dugteren finds Mr Burdon’s article superficial yet the late Sir Keith Holyoake said similar things when he opened the 1968 National Development Conference, and also Dr W. B. Sutch wrote much the same in "Colony or Nation” (1965). Today’s fashionable contempt for Government planning and guidance is extraordinary, for history shows in crisis or war, it is precisely over-all planning that is necessary. The Government trade controls of the eighteenth century in fluenced Adam Smith’s writing of the “Wealth of Nations.” Had he lived a century later when his ideas were being practised he may have developed similar ideas to those of Marx or penlaps those of the moderate John Stuart Mill. The “social” costs of the successfully

developing early Victorian capitalism were not shown in the financial balance sheets, but nevertheless the harsh . urban, environments created were costly in terms of human life and misery. — Yours, etc.,

PATRICK NEARY. January 24, 1986.