N.Z.’S PART IN WORLD AFFAIRS COST £500,000

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22941, 9 May 1949, Page 6

N.Z.’S PART IN WORLD AFFAIRS COST £500,000

A constant flow overseas of Ministers of the Crown, departmental experts and heads of national organisations, and a less visible but no less real flow of public funds, mark the participation of New Zealand in the affairs of the world.

This participation has grown markedly in recent years, not only because of the growth of international organisations since the end of the war but as a reflection of New Zealand’s growing independence as a nation.

International Meetings

No fewer thai 150 international meetings on a wide variety of subjects have already been held this year or are set down for the remaining months of the year, and more will probably be announced for November and December. To about 50 of these New Zealand is invited.

Representatives of the Dominion have already attended about a dozen of these and preparations have been made to participate in most of those still to come. The cost of all this, including the maintenance of the Department of External Affairs which organises and follows up much of this activity, and including also annual contributions to the expenses of a number of international organisations, is likely to exceed £500.000. The Prime Minister, Mr. P. Fraser, of course, attends the major Commonwealth conferences in London and the Minister of Finance. Mr- W. Nash, the leading monetary discussions, such as the Havana conference. The Commissioner of State Forests, Mr. C. F. Skinner, has recently left for Canada to attend a Food and Agriculture preparatory conference on world pulp problems, a subject which vitally concerns the Government in view of its intention to embark on large scale pulp and paper manufacture at Murupara. Travel Restrictions However, the necessity for sending people from New Zealand has been avoided generally except where important policy decisions have to be made or where a man is needed with a current knowledge of subjects such as New Zealand farming, aviation or medicine, or the state of administration in Samoa.

For only about half the conferences so far attended this year has it been considered necessary to send delegates from New Zealand and even in those cases most of the personnel were generally from the Dominion’s permanent overseas offices. “We cannot afford to be out of these organisations,” said the Minister of Finance, in an adress in Christchurch recently. But there are many. more on which New Zealand is not represented directly, perhaps fortunately for her diplomats and the state of the national exchequer. ■ .