OTTAWA AGREEMENT REVISION

Horowhenua Chronicle, 22 March 1938, Page 3

OTTAWA AGREEMENT REVISION

AUSTRALIA’S DELEGATION (By Telegraph —Press Association. AUCKLAND, Last Night. Four official members who will be attached to Australia’s delegation to Britain to discuss the revision of the Ottawa Agreement are through passengers by the Aorangi from Sydney en route to Canada. Their names are: Messrs. E. Abbott, Comptroller-General of Customs, Canberra; J. F. Murphy, secretary of the Department of Commerce of New South Wales; and J. Garside and H. E. Woodrow, officers of the Commonwealth Commerce and Customs Department. Three Federal Ministers who constitute the delegation are travelling by the Mediterranean route to England. They are: Sir Earl Page, Minister of Commerce, Mr. E. G. Menzies, Attor-ney-General, and Colonel T. W. White, Minister of Trade and Customs. “The Ottawa Agreement, which has completed five and a-half years of operation, is continuing until its conditions are revised,’’ said Mr. Abbott, who aded that the importance of the British market to Australia was never greater than to-day, and Australia, in recent years, had been improving conditions for British imports by a downward revision of the tariff.

“Imports arc at a high level,” continued Mr. Abbott, who added that the tariff reductions made had been widespread and consistent with the protection for Australian industries.