S.I. LOCAL BODIES

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 November 1943, Page 2

S.I. LOCAL BODIES

GREY MAYOR’S REPORT

’ The Mayor of Greymouth (Mr F. A. Kitchingham) will present a report to the Borough Council to-mor-row (Thursday) evening on the recent conference of local bodies held at Christchurch., where he and Mr J. D. McDonald, of Westport, were Greymouth Borough representatives among the 100 delegates. In the course of the report, Mr Kitchingham states: —

As regards matters particularly affecting this district, resolutions were passed in favour of an active policy of afforestation and development of hydro-electricity and tourist industries; and also in favour of an inquiry into the practicability of establishing coal carbonisation and plastic industries. Delegates were unanimous in desiring the decentralisation of industry, though in most cases this was qualified by the reservation that the industry should be established in the delegates’ own district. The broad principle of having industries as near as practicable to the source of raw materials was accepted. A remit from Geraldine was carried urging the Government to investigate ways and means of doubling or trebling New Zealand’s population in the next .100 years. During the conference there was a tendency for resolutions to put the burden of. almost the whole of industrial development upon the Government but towards the close of the conference a resolution was passed laying it down as a broad principle that industrial development should be carried out by private enterprise. It was realised that the conference could do little more than metaphorically scratch the ground and that each district should make a complete survey of its natural resources and .its potentialities for production and industrial development