BRITISH INVESTORS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23648, 4 November 1938, Page 19

BRITISH INVESTORS

DOMINION’S SOCIAL LEGISLATION AUSTRALIAN COMMENT Comment on New Zealand’s social legislation and the financing of it in relation to the Dominion’s financial obligations overseas was made by the financial editor of the Sydney Morning Herald in an article on October 25. Headed “ New Zealand’s Problem,” the article was as follows: "The British investor does not mind how a country is governed so long as he is reasonably certain that the interest on the money he has lent to the country will be paid at due date. Thus he does not question the increased social services which have been given to the people of New Zealand by the legislation of the Savage Government, except in so far as that legislation may interfere with the payment of interest on loans raised over a long series of years in London. “Mr Savage quite sincerely declares that the social legislation will make no difference to the interest payments, which will be met in the future just as they have been in the past. But the investor does not seem to be satisfied with the declaration, Perhaps he does not understand how the additional benefits can be paid without somebody going short of what he has received in the past, “ The British investor considers that he should not go short because he has provided the money which has built railways to enable the country to be closely settled and to produce and market economically the butter and the fat stock which play such a large part in the exports of New Zealand, and in her prosperity. And he wonders whether, with all the burdens which social services on the scale now enjoyed place on the cost of producing butter and fat sheep, the export of these commodities will be so high as in the past, and whether with all the goodwill in the world there will be sufficient of New Zealand funds in London after the lapse of a few years’ experience of the higher social services to pay all the interest on loans. At present it is no more than a mere thought, barelv a suspicion of some remoteness. Otherwise, the fall in New Zealand stocks in London would exceed the four points mentioned by the Economist.”