Centre course needed for N.Z.—Moore

Press, 2 June 1988, Page 6

Centre course needed for N.Z. —Moore

Political reporter

The worst thing that could happen to New Zealand is for its nerve to break, according to the Minister of Overseas Trade, Mr Moore. He told the Auckland Manufacturers’ Association yesterday that the nation needed to chart a centre course.

Being for or against the Gibbs report or the Picot report might be a symbol of Left-wing or Right-wing virility but reality meant never being able to be absolutely for or against. There was no end to the advice, from every side, given the Government, Mr Moore said, but the best thing it could do was to protect jobs at home, to advance jobs through exports and to see the dollar down.

The worst thing it could do was to give a good Christmas by interfering and leaving everyone with a hangover for New Year.

Either New Zealand created jobs through exports or it created jobs from local businesses doing better than foreign suppliers, or it would "go down the tubes,” he said. There was a simple way of achieving the right outcome and that was to get the dollar down.

But New Zealand ought not to be bullied and frustrated by anger and a sense of failure and grievance to go back to the mechanism that had the New Zealand Treasury playing poker with the Federal Reserve Banks of Washington and Canberra.

“We haven’t got enough money to do that,” Mr Moore said.

Instead, New Zealand needed to be more productive than it had been. In the last 10 years the Japanese had been five times as efficient as New Zealanders in terms of increased productivity.