STATE COMPETITION

Northern Advocate, 15 March 1929, Page 5

STATE COMPETITION

ADDRESS TO BUSINESS MEN. EQUAL TEEMS FOE- ALL. (Per Press Association. —Copyright.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Stating that they were not .a body of self-seeking axe-grinders, but were out to see that when the State was competing with private enterprise it should be placed on equal terms, Messrs Stronach Paterson and C. A. Treadwell, in' an address to over 100 business men, outlined the aims and objects of the 1028 Committee. Mr Paterson said it had been publicly suggested that they were out to destroy certain great Departments of State, such as the State Fire Jnsur-

unco, Public Trust,- Government Railways and so on, and that they were out to fight the heads of such departments. There was no truth in that suggestion at all, and he Wished to give it an emphatic, denial. , They claimed that every possible opportunity and encouragement should bo given to private enterprise and that the State and public bodies competing in trade' with private enterprise should compete on level terms. They did not seek' a change of Government, or a change in the personnel of the Departments of State. After combating various detailed criticism, the speaker they wore not out to abolish control boards, but desired abolition of the iniquitous compulsory powers entrusted to those

boards. The 1928 Committee had' come into existence as a national necessity and because other organisations, that might be expected to undertake work of that nature, had no full-time officer and no permanent., executive in Wellington. Mr Treadwell said that because the evils came in Reform's time, it did not mean that Reform was responsible. He acknowledged Sir Joseph Ward’s enthusiastic reception of the 1928 Committee. '• A motion supporting the organisation was passed • and an annual subscription fixed.