ASSISTANCE TO INDUSTRY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3912, 5 March 1929, Page 7

ASSISTANCE TO INDUSTRY.

STATEMENT BY PRIME MINISTER. WELLINGTON, February 27. An important pronouncement with regard to Government interference in, and Government assistance to, industry was made by the Prime Minister (Sir Joseph Ward) at the Manufacturers’ Federation luncheon this afternoon. While the progress and development of a country depended mainly upon the individual efforts of its citizens, Sir Joseph Ward said, he and his colleagues recognised that the Government occupied an extraordinarily strong position whether for good or evil in regard to the development of the country, and its aim and object was to help the people of New Zealand to help themselves. He congratulated the Manufacturers’ Federation upon the wonderful progress made by the secondary industries of the country. In the period 1923-27 the number of persons employed had increased by 7 per cent, and wages by 24 per cent., while the total value of their products had increased by 12 per cent., and the value of plant, machinery, buildings, and land by no less than 42 per cent. So far as the requirements of Government departments were concerned, the Government had given instructions that wherever practicable New Zealand-made goods should be used, and that in the ■Qlture

New Zealand manufacturers were to be given the opportunity of tendering for the requirements of the different State departments. The aim of that policy was to secure more openings for the employment of labour in the Dominion. With regard to the setting up of a tariff board, Sir Joseph assured them that the Government wanted to co-ope-rate with the manufacturers in securing such a tariff as would best promote the interests of the whole country and encourage the whole of the Dominion’s industries, but he did not believe that New

Zealand could go in for anything like high protection. He believed that the interests of the manufacturers and the farmers and the general public of the country were so intertwined that they needed to exercise judgment and fairness. The Government would seek to remove the difficulties from the path of all those engaged in the primary and secondary industries, and to inculcate and encourage a spirit of true co-opera-tion between them. He was in favour of producing in New Zealand everything that New Zealand industries could produce, but in his opinion no Government, whether in power to-day, or any Government that might be in power in the future, could say that it was going to develop an out-and-out protectionist tariff. The only way to reach the fullest development of the country’s industries was by hearty co-operation between the producers in the country and the dwellers in the town for the furtherance of

industries, and to give employment to the people. The Government was out to help them in every way in its power. Whether this could be done by means of a tariff board or by means of a commission going from time to time throughout the country required to be considered. The Government would do all it could to help them to bring about what they were working for. Unemployment as it existed at the present time could not be allowed to go on. What the Government w-as shaping for, and he did not think he was boasting if he said that the Government would do it if it were allowed to do so, was to complete the railways that should be completed and to bring about a system of land settlement whereby men who were unemployed would be able, with Government assistance, to establish themselves on the land, not on holdings of thousands of acres but on small holdings, and permanently remove themselves from the itinerant ranks of excess labour. The Government was pledged against undue interference of the State in business. The Government would not take shares or any other interest in any private business, as he was surprised to find some people were asking it to do, but was out to secure fairplay and the fullest of opportunity for all industries in the interests of the whole of the people of the Dominion.