MR FRASER ASKED TO PREVENT FIRM TAKING AUSTRALIAN WORK

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 August 1949, Page 3

MR FRASER ASKED TO PREVENT FIRM TAKING AUSTRALIAN WORK

WELLINGTON, August 16 (P.A.) —The Prime Minister (Mr Fraser) has been asked by the Aid for Britain Council to consider preventing a firm of Palmerston North contractors from taking earth-moving equipment to Australia for use on an irrigation contract. The firm, Earthworks, Ltd, was the successful tenderer for the eight-mile Wairanga irrigation channel in Victoria. The company proposes to take all the engineers and labourers required, a total of 52, from New Zealand. No Australians will be employed. The firm’s equipment includes bulldozers and caterpillar tractors. Most of the clearing work necessary to bring into production great areas of land now not fully used could be done only .with caterpillar tractors, the council said today. Farmers and contractors were desperately short of those machines. Heavy claims for dollars for the same type of equipment for 1950 had unfortunately been lodged by the Earthmovers Association and by the Ministry of Works and other Government departments and that must necessarily restrict the total dollar allocation for farm machinery. Another Contract Possible As Earthworks, Ltd, apparently planned to tender for another large Australian contract later in the year, the council said, it was obvious that the machinery would be lost to New Zealand as 12 months or more of hard use would make its return to New Zealand an unjustifiable expense. New Zealand would therefore make a present to Australia, which had never restricted its dollar purchases as closely as New Zealand had, of many thousands of dollars worth of essential machinery. r The council said it was informed that Earthworks, Ltd intended to send a considerable quantity of bulldozers, caterpillar tractors, and other earthmoving equipment to Australia. Thc council had been pressing for the allocation of dollars to buy just that type of. equipment from the United States and Canada to help farmers do their part in carrying out New Zealand’s undertaking to increase considerably exports of food to Britain in the next seven years. So far the council had not been able to obtain any assurance that sufficient dollars would be available for that purpose in 1950 imports, although a special Government committee that had studied farmers’ requests for 1950 dollars was satisfied that specialised equipment was essential to increased production. Purchased By Farmers The council considered that if there were not sufficient scope for the machinery on construction work within the Dominion, it should be made available for purchase by farmers and farm contractors and that only those machines not bought should be allowed to go. “In asking the Prime Minister to consider intervention the council resolved that representations should be made to the Government to consider whether- the welfare of New Zealand and need to make every effort to meet obligations to Great Britain would not justify that course,” said the council’s statement.