Manawatu Daily Times Advertising New Zealand

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3494, 2 November 1926, Page 8

Manawatu Daily Times Advertising New Zealand

it warms one s heart to read of the efforts the Prime Minister is making at Home, in the intervals between the sittings the imperial Conference, to draw attention to the open arms New Zealand is extending towards the Mother Country and to the opportunities it is offering to those of its people who would cast then destinies in some outlying portion of the Empire. This week in a general talk on New Zealand, which was broadcasted from one end of the British Isles to the other, Mr. Coates, after describing the Dominion as a young country “enjoying beautiful land and a fine climate,* adroitly removed from the picture a blemish to which a less well-disposed person might have given unnecessary prominence.

New Zealand, the Prime Minister told the countless thousands listening to Ids talk, was spending large sums of money on vast public works incidental to extending settlement, yet nevertheless the whole of the national debt, including seventy-six millions of war debt, was being reduced yearly. Curiously enough none of the New Zealand papers have taken any notice of this astounding statement. Probably they think so bold an advertisement of God s Own Country” should be left to run its own impressive course. Nor seems the average Britisher greatly concerned whether New Zealand is reducing or increasing her national indebtedness, and neither the one nor the other would weigh heavily w'ith prospective emigrants.

The truth of the matter, however, in justice to the Minister of Finance, ought to be made known to the New Zealand taxpayers who arc perpetually demanding from the custodian of the Treasury a reduction of their burdens. There has been practically no reduction in the public debt since the country first treated itself to the luxury of living on borrowed money. The only genuine attempt to reduce the country’s indebtedness was made during the financial year of 1891-1)2, when Mr. John Ballancc, perhaps the greatest of New Zealand's financiers, reduced the amount of debentures and stock in circulation—the gross debt, that is—from £38,830,350 to £38,713,068, and received much credit from the members of his own party for the achievement.

But even this reduction in New Zealand s gross debt was misleading and illusory. As a matter of fact, owing to the shrinkage of the sinking funds the net debt during that year actually increased from £37,343,308 to £37,675,206. Since then the public debt has regularly and very considerably increased. It reached the £IOO million mark in 1915, the £l5O million mark in 1918, and the £2OO million mark in 1920. In 1925 the gross debt was £227,814,647 and on March 31 last was £238,855,478, an increase of £11,040,831 in Mr. Coates’s first year of office. To talk of the debt being reduced yearly of course was broadcasting nonsense.

There must be many better ways of advertising New Zealand amongst the people of Great Britain than along the lines pursued by Mr. Coates. We certainly should give our friends overseas the very best impression of local conditions and of the possibilities of the country. But what we require just, now is not immigration propaganda,' but better markets and more sympathetic trading conditions for our primary products. The Premier is no doubt doing his utmost in this connection at the Conference table; but it is the millions of consumers that arc the deciding factor. Had Mr. Coates told the people in England, for instance, that by buying more of our butter, cheese, and meat the New Zealand people would be able to reciprocate by buying more British goods, better results would probably have been achieved.

What we want to tell the British public is not that we arc reducing our national debt, but that, we arc producing the best butter, cheese and mutton in the world. This assertion we may make without any fear of overstepping the bounds of modesty. Commercial publicity has always boon more or less neglected by the Dominion, but the time has arrived when we will have to commercialise many of our natural assets and advantages if wc wish to keep pace with our competitors. To talk of the “beauties of nature and charms of clime” may be more picturesque, but it is by the more common place primary products that wc live and exist,