THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Friday, March 29, 1946. THE INDUSTRIAL FUTURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26114, 29 March 1946, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Friday, March 29, 1946. THE INDUSTRIAL FUTURE

In informing the members of the Motor Body Builders’ Association at their annual conference in this city that the Government’s policy was one of continuous encouragement to secondary industry the Minister of Defence, Mr Jones, chose a suitable audience. Motor body building, as the lineal descendant of carriage building, can claim a history almost as long as the European history of New Zealand. It survived a revolution in transportation methods. As a legitimate local ancillary to the motor vehicle trade it has prospered without any undue protection from the State, its success a result of the application of its directors and craftsmen to tasks they could undertake as satisfactorily and economically as these could be performed overseas. Its continued prosperity may be anticipated. There will be an increasing demand for the services of the trade as commercial chassis, including motor and trolley buses, come into the country in growing numbers to replace vehicles grown old and worn in the war years. But Mr Jones is not so naive, surely, as to believe that because a secure future can be predicted for motor body builders, as for those engaged in other old-established industries of proved capacity, the Government is justified in a policy of, as he himself puts it, never ceasing to encourage secondary industry. Where New Zealand conditions enable a job to be done as well as elsewhere, and at a corresponding cost to the consumer, it is unlikely that the customers of New Zealand abroad will object to the Dominion’s policy. The construction or, in other cases, assembling of motor vehicle bodies in New Zealand provides an excellent case in point, in which the overseas manufacturer and the Dominion worker share in the profit, if scarcely in the technical achievement. But what of the industries which the Government has “ encouraged ” that are not able to compete with those abroad? These, unfortunately, are becoming legion, and the best form of competition they provide is, as has been realised recently by established manufacturers, for the limited number of female employees available on the New Zealand labour market. In making a few complimentary remarks, appropriate to his appearance at this conference, the Minister introduced the inevitable flavouring of Socialist propaganda With an effect which would disturb the serenity of any gathering of practical business men. Every uneconomic industry which is allowed to start in the Dominion is a further industrial slap in the face for New Zealand’s best, and practically sole, customer for the bulk of her primary produce; If the Government’s short-sighted policy of building up local industry at the expense of the industrialists of Great Britain is, as Mr Jones avers, unceasing, the people of New Zealand can look with every confidence to a sorry debacle when the world’s food production returns to normal and Great Britain is forced by considerations of common sense to buy where she can sell.