The Evening Star TUESDAY, JUNE 15, 1926. “BUY NEW ZEALAND GOODS.”

Evening Star, Issue 19276, 15 June 1926, Page 6

The Evening Star TUESDAY, JUNE 15, 1926. “BUY NEW ZEALAND GOODS.”

In Australia Customs taxation is more sensibly managed than in New Zealand. The reluctance of Parliaments to tackle tariff revision is notorious. So many issues are raised when any change of Customs duties is in the air that Governments and members of Parliament prefer to lot sleeping dogs lie until pressure of public opinion can no longer be resisted, and then practically a whole session is devoted to the one subject, in Australia, however, there is a body of permanent officials known as the Tariff Board whose function it is to investigate year in and year out and advise the Minister of Customs, who has constitutional power to make changes in the tariff in accordance with the board’s recommendations. In 1925, tho fifth year of the board’s existence, numerous reports were presented by the board, and of ad those the oue most quoted and criticised was that on agricultural implements. One member of the House of Representatives termed it “ one of the most clearly-reasoned documents ever submitted to tho Commonwealth Parliament,” while another declared it to be “the most one-eyed report over presented.” These very contradictory verdicts merely mark tho difference between Protectionist and I'Teetrade mentality. It is quite sale to hazard the statement that the latter of tho two opinions is that of a Farmers’ or Country Party representative, and it is typical of the bigotry which is always in evidence over the fiscal issue. It has not yet disappeared, though all over the Empire, including Freetrader England herself, both, people and politicians are beginning to shako themselves free from the folly of regarding Freetrade and Protection as rival religious faiths which must be held inviolate and preserved at all costs from intermixture. Generally speaking, the self-governing dominions are Protectionist by conviction and practice. Many of them impose high import duties on manufactured goods, and on such foodstuffs and materials as may compete with their own products in their own home markets, provided they do not exceed legitimate bounds in endeavoring to bolster up secondary industries which the small size of the home market is unable to maintain without paying an altogether exorbitant price for such products. It is in Australia, and perhaps South Ainca also, that there is most danger of such manifestations of excessive Protectionist- zeal. It was to determine whether there has been any such excess that the Commonwealth Tariff Board conducted tho inquiry—its sittings are open to Press and public when evidence is being taken—and framed the report on tho agricultural implement industry.

In this particular case the board was asked to investigate the effect of the tariff upon the price to the users of agricultural machinery, to inquire whether the local manufacturers were making excessive profits, and to estimate the burden, in terms of bushels ot wheat, imposed by the Customs duty on agricultural implements. The board found that the effect of the tariff on agricultural implements is not detrimental to tho best interests of tne primary producer, and imposes no burden whatever on him; that the local manufacturers are not taking undue advantage of the tariff to make excessive profits; that the Australian implement makers have studied the needs peculiar to their own country and have invented and developed implements that have been of inestimable value to the farmer: and the board considers that tho removal of the duty would enable oversea suppliers to cut prices so as to squeeze out tho local manufacturers, and, this achieved, the overseas suppliers would thereafter charge excessive prices. The Tariff Board did not confine its investigations to Australia. It set itself the task of finding whether agricultural implements were sold cheaper in countries where they are free of duty than in countries where the local maker is protected fay Customs duties. The board’s chief comparisons were made with New Zealand and Argentina, neither of which countries has in the board’s view “imposed a really protective' tariff on agricultural implements in our view the New Zealand Protection, as compared with the stiff Australian tariff, is nil. In the case of New Zealand tho board found that imported implements are now generally cheaper in New Zealand than imported implements arc in Australia, and that Australian-made implements are generally cheaper in Australia than imported implements of a similar type in New Zealand. We desire to bring this latter conclusion forcibly beneath the notice of the Government, of members of Parliament, and of all farmers. Our local manufacturers are rot one whit inferior to those of Australia. Why, then, should they not be given equal opportunity in the shape of protective duties, seeing that in Australia the result has

been that farm implements are cheaper there than those of a similar type in unprotected Now Zealand? At our recent Exhibition there was a court devoted to secondary industries, containing exhibits which were really a wonderful achievement for variety, design, and workmanship. Around the walls and suspended from the roof principals were mottoes such as “Support your own industries,” “ Buy New Zealand goods,” etc. Ministers of the Crown and Exhibition Commissioners said nice things about our manufacturers. But what do Ministers of the Crown and members of chambers of commerce do for secondary industries? There is a Department of Industries and Commerce, but, so far as extending practical help to manufacturers is concerned, the Minister at its head has invariably been either apathetic or powerless. Less than a fortnight ago there appeared in our columns a letter traversing the remarks on the trading department of the South Lsland Dairy Association passed by the chairman at the annual meeting during Winter Show week. The policy of the association since inaugurating this branch has been to kick away the bridge which carried it over a very awkward time. During'tho war, when outside supplies were unprocurable, local manufacture of dairying plant was of inestimable use and value to the dairy farmer and dairy factories. It looked as though another promising secondary industry had gained a permanent footing. But the gratitude of the producer and of that menacing body, the Dairy Export Control Board (of which the South Island Dairying Association is now an executive adjunct), is shown by a policy which is in effect a boycott of the local industry. The association undertakes installation of plants in factories, and the goods supplied are all imported. Though of foreign origin—not even produced within the Empire—they come in free of duty. Worse than that, the local manufacturer is actually penalised in competition by having to pay a stiff duty on some of his raw material—up to 25 per cent, in one case for copper coils from America for milk coolers. And the Government looks on complacently. If it were a Government wifh a sense of duty to the. country il would at once secure power to rejme this disgraceful impost of 25 per cent., and would at once exorcise the power it has to levy the 10 per cent. “ suspended ” duty standing against dairying machinery in the schedule of the 1921 New Zealand Customs Tariff. But we are informed on excellent authority that there is not the faintest likelihood of it doing cither, because in the first place, so far as New Zealand manufacturers arc concerned, the Department of Industries and Commerce is a clumsy joke, and in the second place ,“ours is a farmers’ Government.” But cannot even a “ farmers’ Government ” absorb knowledge from the Australian Tariff Board and allow penetration into its intellect of that body’s discovery that the Aus-tralian-made implements are generally cheaper to-day in highly protected Australia than are imported implements of a similar type in Freetrade Now Zealand? In the meantime the once promising New Zealand dairy machinery-making industry, with headquarters in Dunedin, languishes and is on the verge of disappearance. The causes are callous neglect by the Government and a policy by a combine which the law of libel compels ns to describe in mealymouthed terms as lack of patriotism. We refrain from calling it exactly what it should bo called. In conclusion we remind our readers of the mottoes in the Secondary Industries Court of the Exhibition, and ask them whether there is not a strong tincture of hypocrisy in rulers who so applauded them at the time and ignore and flout them as they have always don© and are doing at tills moment.