MORE ABOUT PRODUCTION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23492, 5 May 1938, Page 10

MORE ABOUT PRODUCTION

This Dominion, declares the Prime Minister, is not going to be " harnessed financially to the chariot wheels of other countries." Mr Savage was not " arguing " with the president of the New Zealand Farmers' Union when he made that statement. It seems that the Prime Minister dislikes argument. He prefers to " tell" people what the Government is going to do and what it is not going to do; and, if he creates the impression that the Government's policies are too frequently based less on reason than on expediency or untested theory, it apparently does not worry him to do so. The Farmers' Union has taken leave to doubt, as did the British actuary who estimated the cost of the Government's social security proposals, that there is any good reason to suppose that production will expand in the next two or three decades at the same rate as it has

grown since the beginning of the century. It will be recalled that when it was. suggested to him by the Prime Minister that as the country was " miles ahead" in production now compared with its position ten years ago it might be still further ahead at the end of the next ten years, Mr Maddex replied simply that " the position seemed to him to depend not only on production but on the price of products and the ability to market them." It will also seem to most people that while we are dependent to a vital extent on overseas markets for the absorption of our produce—and we are undoubtedly in that position—just so long shall we be " harnessed financially to the chariot wheels of other countries." But the Prime Minister has other ideas, though what they are he is either unwilling or unable to state in intelligible terms. "We say," he declares, " that so long as we produce the goods and services in New Zealand we have the power of government to make them available to the people." That may mean anything or nothing. But when it is added that it is not the intention of the Government to be " harnessed to the old orthodox methods," and that its ultimate mission is to see that the money of the future finds its way into different pockets, it can be realised to what extent Mr Savage and those who follow him are prepared to forsake the actual substance of security for a shadow visible only to the Socialist theorist.