SECONDARY INDUSTRIES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22352, 25 February 1936, Page 15

SECONDARY INDUSTRIES

MINISTER'S PROPOSALS COMPLETE CONTROL FEARED "If the Minister's policy is adopted it will finally mean complete control by the Government of all industry," said Mr. A. A. Ross, president of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, when commenting upon remarks made at Wellington by the Minister of Industries and Commerce, the Hon. D. G. Sullivan, about the proper planning and organisation of secondary industries. Mr. -Ross said there were many industries which had been established and developed behind a tariff wall and which showed no signs of being able to exist without some kind of support or protection. If the proposals of the Government would really lead to an improvement as far as that position was concerned it was so much to the good. The Government's proposals, however, appeared to mean an extension of State control and the elimination of private enterprise and initiative, Mr. Koss said. To that extent they must result in stagnation. There were admittedly losses and waste under the competitive system, but it could not be gainsaid that it was competition and private initiative that had brought the world's production up to the present standard, and in no country had public control been anything like as successful. "Competition is not a means of forcing the buyer to accept the irritating position of being told to take it or leave it by some autocratic monopolist seller," Mr. Ross added. "It is a means of promoting efficiency in production. Finally, let me say that the politics of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce have been less Government in business."