LABOUR'S POLICY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 73, 23 September 1943, Page 9

LABOUR'S POLICY

SECONDARY INDUSTRY

"We have the resources, we have the workers with the skill and the initiative to make the things here that we need here and use here," said Mr. R. McKeen. Labour, Wellington South, speaking m the St," James Presbyterian Hall, "We established and encouraged the development, of manufacturing industries in the face of a flood of opposition and in the teeth of a spate of propaganda engendered by vested interests both In New Zealand and* also from overseas," he said. "Tens of thousands of pounds were spent trying to tell New Zealanders that the Labour Government was making a terrible mistake. People were told that it couldn't be done; that New Zealand would be ruined, that we couldn't manufacture in the Dominion/ But it has been done, Our people found employment making the, things we use and need, and we must go on doing it if we are to reduce unemployment to the irreducible minimum—the place where, because a person can't work, social security will care for the individual; We must develop our primary and secondary industries. , "We did expand, and few people prior to the war would have visualised the manufacture of machines and munitions in this country, a work that has earned the praise of overseas experts for the quality of the workmanship. We have, according to visitors from the United Kingdom and from the United States, done a job equally as good in quality as anything produced elsewhere, and we have done it in less time than other countries where they have more facilities. , "We have metal resources here, and, while there may be argument about the quantity, there is no division of opinion regarding the quality of. the deposits. We will have our own iron and steel industry and we will go on developing our manufacturing industries." ■ - ■ ■