RUSSIAN PETROL.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21387, 15 July 1931, Page 6

RUSSIAN PETROL.

Thk intimation that a consignment of Russian petrol has reached New Zealand supplies a significant proof of the far-reaching nature of the campaign which the Soviet has instituted with the object of obtaining credits and markets abroad and also, no doubt, with the motive of impressing the proletariat of foreign countries with, if possible, a sense of the success of the Five-Year Plan. The dumping of Russian wheat has given cause for some apprehension in the United States and Canada. Butter and other commodities from Russia have been placed on the market in Great Britain for sale at competitive prices. A shipload of Russian timber arrived recently in Australia. France has also had experience of the effect of the Soviet bid for markets, apparently without regard to the production

costs of the commodities that are offered, and has taken action to prevent unscrupulous competition on the part of Russia. So far the effect of the Soviet trade campaign has not been very serious, but its potentialities for causing an upset in European trading conditions are certainly not negligible. Whether the introduction of Russian petrol into New Zealand constitutes “ dumping ” is a question to which only the Soviet Government could supply the answer, for the Government has a monopoly in Russian trade and alone , can reveal whether goods are being sold at a price commensurate with the costs of production. When reference was made at a meeting of the Auckland Automobile Association to the introduction of Russian petrol a member remarked that he saw no reason why the commodity should not be sold in New Zealand so long as the Soviet was prepared to buy our butter and wool. The assumption that the Soviet is a customer of New Zealand is distinctly dubious. .No Russian buyers were present at the last season’s wool sales in the Dominion, and it has still to be established that the Soviet made any purchases through buyers who attended the sales. That Russia is a purchaser of New Zealand butter is even more questionable. The Russian butter which has been shipped to England necessarily competes with New Zealand butter in that market, but if New Zealand butter is exported to the Soviet the quantities are so small as to be ignored in the official trade returns. There is, however, another question that emerges from the introduction of Russian petrol into New Zealand. It is a moral as Avell as a commercial question. The oil industry in Russia is, at the present time, of course, operated by the Soviet as a State enterprise, but they have short memories who imagine that the industry Ayas developed by the Russian State. Actually, British enterprise Avas mainly responsible for the tapping of the oil resources of Russia. Before the war investors, mainly British, spent tens of millions of pounds over a period of thirty years in developing the Avells. After the overthroAV of the Czarist regime the Soviet seized the wells, and it has repudiated the claims of foreign investors for compensation for this appropriation of their property. In the circumstances, the allegation that the petrol for which the Soviet is seeking markets is actually stolen is one that can hardly be regarded as wholly Avithout foundation. It is one that should Aveigh not altogether lightly with any British community in which Russian petrol is offered for sale.

THE SESSION. 'The Leader of the Opposition was asked, during a week-end visit to Christchurch, for an estimate of the duration of the present Parliament. He replied, perfectly justly, that the life of Parliament and the date of the general election depended entirely upon the nature of the legislation that is to be brought forward by the Government. It will be on the financial proposals contained in the'Budget that the question whether the dissolution will occur in advance of the period at which it would normally take place will be decided. Those proposals will necessarily involve taxation, but, fortunately for the community, the Hoover plan will enable the Government to claim less from an already heavily taxed people than would otherwise , have been the case. In the past year the amount of the taxation levied upon the Dominion fell not far short of £19,000,000. Already, this session, fresh taxation to the extent of £1,000,000, in round figures, is being imposed for the purposes of unemployment relief. The taxable capacity of the public is being somewhat severely tried, and for that reason the proposals that will be contained in the Budget will certainly be scrutinised very closely. In the meantime, however, Parliament is settling down to a routine that is not suggestive of any anxiety on the part of the members lest they may be rudely dismissed to face the electors before the time when, in the circumstances most favourable to them, they would ordinarily have to seek a I'enewal of the confidence that was reposed in them in November, 1928. One of our northern contemporaries has made the unkindly suggestion that they are not likely, by' their own votes, to curtail the period for which they are the paid servants of the State. A dissolution prior to the effluxion of a Parliament is, as a matter of fact, a rare occurrence in New Zealand. Once only since the institution of triennial Parliaments, over fifty years ago, has an appeal to. the country been, made in advance of the time at which it would have been necessary in the ordinary course of events. And it may be surmised that the members are not consumed by a burning desire to precipitate an ordeal which may, and probably will, involve some of them in political extinction. So it is that the Lower House is going through the performance of debating the Address-in-Reply—a performance that might have been wholly dispensed with if there had been any earnest wish to expedite the business of the session—-and that there seems every promise that there will be a waste of time as serious as the public has come to expect in every session under conditions that are not abnormal as they are to-day.