No panaceas, says Labour

Press, 16 July 1987, Page 2

No panaceas, says Labour

By

TONY SMITH

in Nelson

The Labour Party’s regional policy announced yesterday in Nelson contains no fresh promises or panaceas for provinces feeling the economic pinch. The Minister of Regional Development, Mr Caygill, one of three Cabinet Ministers who introduced the policy, said the Government was not “armed with any secret agenda” because there was not one. “We are not about to unveil a brand, spanking new Mark 111 version of Labour’s economic policy or a new approach to regional development,” he said, during the policy launch at Nelson Pine Industries’ new mediumdensity fibreboard plant at Richmond. The Minister of Overseas Trade and Marketing, Mr Moore, and the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Mr Moyle, also emphasised that the Government would not dispense hand-outs, subsidies or protection payments to the regions. Introducing Labour’s policy document, entitled: “The Regions: Towards 2000. Building on our Strengths,” the Ministers said the Government would not “insult your intelligence by offering bribes.” It was easy, the policy statement said, to use taxpayers’ money to set up false economies and false industries which inevitably fell over the minute the taxpayer said “enough’s enough.” The Government’s policy again attributes any regional downturn to what Mr Caygill termed the “economic mess” Labour had inherited from the previous National Government. The policy accuses National of failing to tackle regional industries which had run at a loss for years. National’s introduction of the South' Island Electricity Concession scheme had benefited only selected industries in the South Island and had been replaced last year with a 22 per cent differential between the price of electricity to supply authorities. National’s “think big” policy, Labour’s policy says, had sucked regional development initiative into a few capital-inten-

sive projects. Resources were given to a chosen few regions and the rest were ignored. Rather than making rash pre-election promises about what it will offer regions in the future, Labour’s policy reviews the measures it has introduced in the last three years. Mr Moore said the Government’s job was to "take the thumb off the wind-pipes” of regional entrepreneurs and allow them to use their abilities. Labour’s strategy was to encourage the regions to build on their strengths. “You can’t put pipis in a beach where there were no pipis before and expect a harvest,” he said. The old regional development strategy of promising to pour money into local ventures, regardless of their market viability, had gone, said Mr Moore. “The success of each region can come only if that region knows its strong points and deliberately sets about exploiting them to the full.” Mr Caygill said the Government had encouraged the regions to identify and develop their resources. People in the regions understood that the single most important factor that would help them most was an over-all improvement in the economic climate. “Not subsidies, not handouts but a fall in interest rates, lower inflation and an improvement in the competitiveness of New Zealand industry and New Zealand producers, compared with other countries.” Those were still the Government’s objectives, Mr Caygill said, and another three years would see them achieved. Mr Moyle said the Government was stripping away the web of intervention which had created a “cocooned environment.” He said New Zealand, and the regions in particular, had a great future in aquaculture and marine farming. However, the secret of regional development was in the region’s own backyard, said, Mr Moyle. Regions had to study their resources, look at what others were doing, and give entrepreneurs a fair go.