AN UNWANTED MEASURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23005, 7 October 1936, Page 8

AN UNWANTED MEASURE

The reaction of those Chambers of Commerce throughout the Dominion which have studied the Industrial Efficiency Bill at present before the House of Representatives is wholly unfavourable to the measure, and the Government will act reasonably if it heeds the numerous requests made for the postponement of further consideration of it at least until next session. Indeed, in the face of the determined opposition of the Chambers of Commerce, which are representative of trade and industry to a much greater extent than are the various associations of manufacturers, the Government can have small justification for proceeding with the Bill .this session. Some of the manufacturers' organisations profess to want the Bill, or at least to approve of it in principle, but even they have expressed the wish to see it amended in the direction of providing greater safeguards against the misuse *of arbitrary powers. The Prime Minister has said in the most definite terms that, _if the Bill is not acceptable in its present form to those interests it is intended to benefit, the Government will not go on with it. He has had as positive an indication as he could desire that industrial interests do not view with any favour the prospect of losing control of their own undertakings to a Socialist bureaucracy. That being so, the obvious course for Mr Savage to follow, short of withdrawal of the Bill, is to acquiesce in the requests for postponement of further consideration until a later session of Parliament. On Monday a special meeting of the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce added its objection to the Bill to the objections raised by other metropolitan chambers and by the fully representative meeting of New Zealand delegates to the Congress of Empire Chambers at present sitting in Wellington. Mr H. Brash did not exaggerate the far-reaching implications of the measure when he said that it was proposed to confer on the Minister of Industries and Commerce absolute powers for the control of business enterprise of every possible kind. The definition of scope contained in the Bill is so wide as to be virtually allembracing. It is not the intention of the Government merely to cooperate with industry for the purpose of securing greater co-ordina-tion and efficiency. The Bill provides that the Minister, through the proposed Bureau of Industries, shall actually be in a position to dictate industrial policy, and to see that effect is given to this policy, since no appeal could be taken past him. Instead of co-operation the business director is being offered compulsion. " Rationalisation," if this Bill were made law, would become a fetish, with the interests of the individual being subordinated to those of the State, as conceived by a Socialist executive. And the result, sooner or later, as Mr Brash suggested, would most likely be an extension of State control to the point where personal liberty and initiative would simply disappear.