N.Z. MUNITIONS MAKING

Grey River Argus, 30 July 1940, Page 6

N.Z. MUNITIONS MAKING

HON. D. G. SULLIVAN Replies to Critic [Per Press Association.] WELLINGTON, July 29. In reply to the statement by R. Burn of the Precision Engineering Company, regarding the production of munitions in New Zealand, Hon. D. G. Sullivan, said that he understood that a competent engineer, Mr James Cable, who accompanied him to Australia, and who there personally investigated Australia’s methods, had publicly referred to some of Mr Burn’s statements as nonsense.

“I agree with Mr Cable, and I am sure that everyone engaged in munition production in Australia would also describe Mr Burn’s statements as nonsense,” said the Minister. “Will Mr Burn ask himself why the great industries of Australia have not yet produced Bren carriers, Bren guns, and many other things so urgently needed by its fighting forces, and V/hy they only very recently got into production on such things as grenades? He does not seem to realise that for the making of these things veritably thousands of jigs, tools and gauges, and great quantities of special steels are needed. But despite months of intense effort and the expenditure of huge sums of money, Australia has not yet been able to produce. “I was shown at the railway workshops in Melbourne, where Bren carriers are being made, a thousand special tools required for that one job, and these had to be designed from a survey of a model carrier in the shops. I saw, in the armament factories, the production of guns .held up for the lack of special gauges that, up to the present, could neither be produced, nor secured. “The assumption by Mr Burn that my 15-minute broadcast a week ago was a full declaration of the policy of the Government in regard to the production of munitions is equally nonsensical. While in Australia, we dealt with hundreds of items coming within the categdry of munitions, and I could not in an hour—let alone a quarter of an hour—cover reasonab’y an adequate report of the work dene, or the intentions of the Government in connection therewith. And may 1 •say, most emphatically, there has never been any intention on the part of the Government to do all of the munition work in the railway workshops. We will use whatever establishment, private or public, that is most suitable for the job. We are not, on this issue, one little bit concerned about any question of private or public enterprise. However, I desire to tell Mr Burn that the foundations of the magnificent effort now being made by Australia in the production of munitions—an effort that will be successful—is great State' factories and railway workshops,! though, quite wisely, Mr Essmgton Lewis is bringing into the scheme ail ; of the private engineering establish- i ments who can help in the produc-i tion of parts which are assembled at j the State establishments. I honour i and admire Australia for the great: job she is now doing. We will, to the limit of our resources, try to emulate her, and I am grateful to all her public men, her great industrialists, and the heads of her great State departments' for (all the 1 assistance they are prepared to give to New Zealand in supplying plans, drawings, specifications and materials, and, in some degree, fabricated parts. I think it would have been many months, perhaps years before, we eould have got into production on munitions without such help, and we have reason to be grateful to Australia for the spirit she has displayed towards us in these matters.