Development policy advocated

Press, 20 August 1986, Page 4

Development policy advocated

A regional development policy would help to prevent the closing of industries such as the yarn mill, said the member of Parliament for Sydenham, Mr Jim Anderton, last evening. Such a development policy, which would give incentives to industrial development in some parts of New Zealand, would help to even the effects of the over-all ecdhomic policy, he said.

“This kind of job loss hits areas like Christchurch very hard and points to the need for a fully integrated regional development policy to

offset the uneven way in which a market-led economic strategy impacts on different regions of the country,” said Mr Anderton. “No matter what the macro-economic policy, it will have an uneven effect. It cannot flow evenly across the country in its impact and it is not, there is no question about that.” Mr Anderton, chairman of the caucus regional development committee and a critic from the Left of Rogernomics, said that a discriminatory policy to favour production units in areas of New Zealand that did not have the advantages of other areas was

needed to attain a balance.

“I personally have a strong commitment to a very active regional development policy because I believe that if you run an economy the way this economy is being run you need such an active and interventionist type of policy,” he said. “If you are running the kind of policy we are running and you want some kind of balance across the country, you have to have a means of gaining that balance.”

The Government was working on a regional development policy but it was still in the early

stages and had yet to be approved at caucus and party level, he said. Mr Anderton said that because of the lower population in the South Island, job losses the size of that from the woollen mill were much greater in their impact. “If we take 250 jobs in Christchurch, that is the equivalent of 1000 jobs in Auckland and that is a very significant loss of jobs.”

A drift north by people unable to find jobs locally made the problem worse because it reduced the potential market in the South Island, said Mr Anderton.