DANGER SEEN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 28 November 1938, Page 4

DANGER SEEN

LABOUR POLICY SECONDARY INDUSTRIES HIGHER TARIFFS CRITICISED “Because a house is infested with rats would any sane man put a match to the house in order to get rid of the rats?” asked Mr F. W. Doidge (Nationalist M.P. Lr Tauranga), speaking a few days ago (reports the “Star”). “Yet we know from candid admissions made that many people voted to keep the present Government in office, people believing that after another three years, during which it must reap as it has sown, permanent extinction would follow. “That may be the ultimate fate of the Government, but what about the fate of the country in the process,” he continued. “The Prime Minister’s public statements during past weeks, because they have been meant to be conciliatory. are more alarming. Mr Savage now tells the people that the Government cannot take charges lightly, and he begs the people to believe that their money is safe in New Zealand. ‘After all,’ he says, ‘the millennium is not just around the corner.’ “REEFING HIS SAILS” “Mr Savage is reefing his sails,” continued the speaker. “That is an ominous sign. His worries are mounting up overseas. A loan of £17,000,000 must be redeemed next year. He can only do it by borrowing on the London market. Our London reserves have shrunk during his regime from £44,000,000 to £6,000,000, and that in prosperous times. Mr Savage says the reason is that imports have been greater than exports, but we'll remember that while the sale of our exports in Britain have reached the magnificent sum of £66,000,000 in one year, our imports from Britain in any one year have never approximated in value one half that sum. Now the Prime Minister proceeds to enunciate a most dangerous policy. Mr Savage says that imports have been greater than exports to the extent that makes it necessary to manufacture in New Zealand things now being imported. No one objects to encouragement of a sound secondary industry, but New Zealand is first and foremost a primary producing country. If it is to become the policy of the Government to bolster up uneconomic industries, the only one method by which it can be done is by a heightening of the tariff walls. That means, increasing prices to the consumer. RETALIATION LIKELY “Even more serious are the repercussions of such a policy in Britain. The London market is almost the only market for our primary products and an embargo on imported British manufactured goods must lead to retaliation. The future of our primary industry is thus imperilled. “Throughout the length and breadth of New Zealand there is need for a clear understanding of a simple truth —that in this country it is the primary producer who provides all our wealth. Encouragement of primary production must at all times be the object of all honest political endeavour and heightening tariff walls deals a direct blow to the farmer. When the farmer suffers the whole community suffers, for in the long run every man, woman and child in the Dominion is dependent on what the farmer produces from the soil. “There will be many people who will regret,” he concluded, “that in the three difficult years ahead the guidance of affairs is to remain in the hands of a group of visionaries.”