SALES TO GREAT BRITAIN

Evening Star, Issue 21640, 8 February 1934, Page 8

SALES TO GREAT BRITAIN

MR GOBDFELLOW'S FIGURES CHALLENGED DISTORTION ALLEGED [Pem United Press Association.] WELLINGTON, February 8. A £25 challenge to Mr Goodfellow was issued to-day by Mr J. T. Spears, vice-president of the New Zealand Manufacturers’ Federation. Mr Spears declared that he would donate £25 to the funds of the Reciprocal Trade Association if Mr Goodfellow could substantiate tho figures quoted by him at a recent meeting in Christchurch. Air Goodfellow had stated that during the first nine months of 1933, New Zealand’s sales of primary produce to Great Britain amounted to £31,500,000. The actual amount was £26,730,000 (including exchange), as shown in the official Abstract of Statistics for October, 1933. Even this figure included over £3,000,000 worth of produce shipped merely via London to foreign countries, so that the true figure of sales to Britain herself during the period was only approximately £23,730,000 (New Zealand currency), or approximately £19,000,000 (sterling). Yet Mr Goodfellow had deliberately stated that tho amount was £31,500,000. „ i It was evident that what_ Mr Goodfellow quoted was the United Kingdom valuation, which included freight, insurance, landing charges, and buyers’ commission, all payable to England herself, and certainly not to be included in the amount of Now Zealand’s “ sales .of primary produce to Great Britain.” Freight alone accounted for over £6,000,000 (New Zealand currency). Mr Goodfellow’s figure included also the whole of the wool and other produce transhipped at London en route to the Continent.

Such a gross distortion of fact, said Mr Spears, was probably unparalleled in the history of public controversy in New Zealand, and showed the lengths to which the propagandists of certain interests were prepared to go.