DEVELOPMENT OF INDUSTRY.

Taranaki Daily News, 9 November 1932, Page 6

DEVELOPMENT OF INDUSTRY.

One of the most interesting statements made at the banquet to celebrate the opening of the Stratford-Main Trunk railway was the brief description by the Minister of Industries and Commerce of the aims and objects of the Development of Industries Committee recently established by the Government. He intimated that the committee’s principal functions would be to develop industry in New Zealand on sound and technical economic lines, sponsoring industries in an infant state and paying particular attention to the application of science to industry on modern lines. In a broader sense the committee hopes to create a sound industrial viewpoint compatible with national and Imperial development. So long as the committee consists of authorities who confine themselves to activities of an advisory nature it should be an influence for good, and many an industry languishing for want of better organisation, more modern methods, or reconstruction on economic lines might profit by the committee’s advice and take a new lease of life and vigour. It is in the tail of the committee’s programme, however, that danger lies. One of the ways in which it is suggested industry may be helped is by granting protection against internal competition for a period; another is by enacting new legislation “to facilitate progress of industry in desirable directions.” Both these proposals should be approached with the utmost caution. New Zealand has already had bitter experience of the results of over-protection and unnecessary State meddling in business. Fear and uncertainty caused by ever-changing and ever-amending legislation have already driven into banks and gilt-edged securities capital that would be serving a much more useful purpose if invested in industry. Let the committee content itself with advising and leading, and it may help the waggon of industry back on to the highroad to prosperity; let it try to drive, and the waggon may sink deeper and deeper into the mire.