GREATER EFFORT URGED

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 248, 16 July 1941, Page 5

GREATER EFFORT URGED

Munitions For The Forces “I dp not think that we are doing nearly all that can be done in the way of providing munitions and other needs for the armed forces of the Empire,” said the Dominion president of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union, Mr. \V. W. Mulholland, in his address at the opening of the annual Dominion conference of the union in Wellington yesterday. ‘‘They need clothing and similar goods for which our primary industries produce the raw materials,” Mr. Mulholland said. “True, we have not unlimited plant. But let our workpeople know the urgency, and free them from hamrx-ring restrictions, and they will get the utmost production possible. “I noted a suggestion the other day that New Zealand and Australia should be organized for the production of munitions on a unit basis —we, in New Zealand, producing those parts of guns, munitions, and war machines, which required much labour and little material, consequently involving comparatively little transport. The finished parts would be sent to an assembling plant in one of the Australian States where, from other sources, other parts would come for final assembly, thus making New Zealand a unit in a huge Empire war factory in the Pacific. “The energetic operation of such a scheme as this would obviate any possibility of unemployment, due to the adjustment of industry to a war basis. Indeed the main obstacle in the way of obtaining the full results desired would be the difficulty of obtaining sufficient labour. Of course this means organization, training, and energetic direction. I believe that the Government is moving in this direction, but it is moving far too slowly for the urgency of the times.”