Validity Queried By Businessman

Northern Advocate, 15 December 1938, Page 10

Validity Queried By Businessman

[Special to “Northern Advocate ”] AUCKLAND, This Day.

The validity of Government regulations affecting control, of overseas trade was challenged today by Mr Gainor Jackson, at the meeting of the Council of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce. The chamber decided to refer the matter to the Associated Chambers of Commerce for an opinion as to whether the regulations were ultra vires and to seek further information from the Government as to whether the restrictions were a matter of temporary expediency or part of a long-range plan of economy. Reference to Customs Act.

Mr Jackson said that while Section 46 of the Customs Act, 1913, gave the Minister the power to prohibit the importation of any goods, his powers were specially limited by qualifications that appeared fn the same section.

The section must be read as a whole for the intention of the Government that passed the Act to be fully understood.

Regulations, however, are now being made under this Act. Although they imparted into the preamble the exact wording of the Customs Act, giving the Governor-Gcneral-fn-Coimcil the power to prohibit the importation into New Zealand of any goods, the prohibition of the import of which was in the best interests of the country, it did not in his opinion convey the actual meaning. Permanent Protection Wanted. “I would like to make the viewpoint of manufacturers perfectly clear,” said Mr H. W. Shove, manufacturers’ representative on the council, in the course of discussion. “There is opportunity in the present legislation for the Government to assist certain industries. The position is, however, that if manufacturers under the protection of these regulations expand their industries by the injection of more capital, and the employment of more hands, they must be entitled to some permanency of protection.”