INCIPIENT ANTAGONISM

Taranaki Daily News, 27 October 1932, Page 12

INCIPIENT ANTAGONISM

, COMMERCE AND’GOVERNMENT . “ENCROACHMENT ON LIBERTY.” The ‘'real danger” of the divergence ■of views between, the Government and (commercial interests developing into ian antagonism is discussed in the »anmual report of the Associated Chambers icxf Commerce of New Zealand to be presented to the conference at Dunedin. The report states; — I4 The last year Gias revealed beyond; any doubt ijese(cessity for the work of this association. The burden and restrictions upon busi'ness—irksome as they were- in previous years—have become intolerable in the third year of the depression) ahdi the work of resisting further encroachment on the liberty to trade and additional burdens on trading in the interests, not alone of business people, but ■of our Dominion and people as a whole, lias become one requiring never-ceasing ? vigilance and public enlightenment for the preservation of freedom to do the business by which we all live. 1 '“‘The strain of the economic situation has' been tfelt by Governments, both national and local, which have tried, to protect their decreasing revenues, and antecedent and current obligations, at the expense of private enterprise in trade, industry and commerce and the professions, without apparent regard for the fact that it is only by the results of encouragement to prosperous trading that any Governments can continue to live.

• “The two (reports of the National Expenditure Commission have now confirmed the attitude which this association has for several years taken up on the question of the burden of public expenditure, and the efforts it has made to resist and reduce this imposition on the business of the Dominion. These reports justify and necessitate our continuance to urge these reforms.. “The apparently cynical indifference on the part of the Government to the effects on individual commercial business of the exchange pool regulations issued by Order-in-Co-uncil last Christmas Eve, for the purpose of providing the Treasury and local bodies with a short way out of their own overseas monetary difficulties, indicate what would happen had the commercial community no organisation for its protection.

‘‘Therefore it seems that there is a real danger in this Dominion (which has accumulated the highest debt per capita of its population in the world) of a divergence, which might become an antagonism, between the view of those responsible for Government, that their method in the short view of upholding the credit and prestige of. the State must be carried out at all costs, and the view of those responsible for the business of the community that the host and burden of Government must be strictly proportionate to what the resources of the Dominion can afford, and business can bear. "■

“It might well become the high function of this association to prevent the incipient antagonism from growing, and to discover a via media along Which both can travel in future toward the cotamon end of the general good.”