A TEN-YEAR PLAN
In the debate in the House of Commons on the Ottawa Conference, Mr. L. S. M. Amery said that their representatives at Ottawa should endeavour to secure in the fiscal domain such an extension of Empire preference as would definitely encourage the main volume of Empire trade to flow into Empire channels and to concentrate creative powei for their several markets on mutual and common development. Whether that was to be done by raising Dominion duties against foreign trade or lowering them to British trade was an entirely secondary and relatively unimportant question. Their immediate interest lay much more in securing the maximum amount of preference against foreign competitors, who, in a normal year, would be selling something like £300,000,000 worth of manufactures to the rest of the Empire, than in overpersuading the Dominions, against their own conception of their own interests, to reduce their duties Jt was important also that any arrangements arrived tit should be for a substantial period, so as to enable capital and enterprise to
concentrate with confidence on their task and to go ahead on a 10-year plan for reconstruction. Why should we leave all the big ideas to Russia? Whatever preferences were agreed on should not be susceptible to being whittled away by either side in negotiations with foreign countries. To permit that would be to wreck the whole spirit of the conference. At Ottawa they should so frame their different agreements as to leave each party the absolute unfettered freedom to extend the privileges of those agreement! to any other part of the Empire, but with no obligation to do so; freedom to extend preferences to all the other members of the Empire who were substantially co-operating in a common Empire policy, but to withhold those advantages from those who were not fully playing the game. (Cheers.)
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WC19320730.2.111.6.7
Bibliographic details
Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 178, 30 July 1932, Page 13 (Supplement)
Word Count
307A TEN-YEAR PLAN Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 178, 30 July 1932, Page 13 (Supplement)
Using This Item
NZME is the copyright owner for the Wanganui Chronicle. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of NZME. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.