NO TRADE RIVALRIES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 14 August 1944, Page 3

NO TRADE RIVALRIES

N.Z. AND AUSTRALIA MR BARCLAY’S STATEMENT Sydney. August 10. New Zealand could have taken 500.000 cases of oranges last year from Australia, said the Dominion’s High Commissioner, Mr Barclay, speaking at a civic reception at Gosford, the centre of the rich New South Wales orangegrowing district. When the war was over, he would make every effort to get New South Wales oranges into New Zealand in big quantities. There were now no trade rivalries between the two Dominions, he added, and the position did not arise where New Zealand said: ‘‘lf you take my potatoes I will take yc 1 oranges.” There had been reciprocity oetween the two countries during the war in goods in short supply in either Dominion and he held the decided opinion that there should be more of the co-operative spirit and less of the competitive, which should never enter into trade relations again. With the exception of the Murrumbidgee irrigation area, there has been a total ban on the importation of New South Wales oranges into New Zealand since the end of 1933, because, the New Zealand authorities stated, of the risk of introducing the fruit fly. Those in New South Wales concerned with citrus exportation contended -it the time that the prohibition was enforced following activities by Tasmanian potato growers which resulted in the Federal Government banning the entry of New Zealand potatoes into the Commonwealth.