WAR COST DOMINION £640,000,000, SAYS MINISTER OF FINANCE

Wanganui Chronicle, 17 November 1949, Page 5

WAR COST DOMINION £640,000,000, SAYS MINISTER OF FINANCE

HAMILTON, Last Night (PA).— There were 600 people at a meeting in the Theatre Royal, Hamilton, tonight, addressed! by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Nash). He received a rousing reception and was listened to attentively with few interjections. Referring to the New Zealand debt, Mr. Nash said that although the internal debt had increased by £310,000,000 since 1935, over £214,000,000 was for the Second World War and for the other £100,000,000 there was over £118,000,000 in assets. The war had cost New Zealand £640.000,000 and the Dominion had paid off two-thirds of it during the war, the only country that had done so. Alongside the two conflicting idealogies of Communism and Democracy that today splits the world, is another grave menace, especially to New Zealand, said Mr. Nash. Just to the north and west of the Dominion there are 1,200,000,000 people who have never had enonugh to eat, not because of the war, but because there is not enough productive land in the country for the teeming millions, Those people were not getting enough to eat. Now New Zealand, with only 2,000,000 people for 140,000 square miles, and Australia with only 8,000,000 people for 3,000,000 square miles, will always be menaced unless ways and means were found to feed the starving millions. Mr. Nash said that New Zealand could avoid the full effect of any recession in overseas prices because of the guaranteed price, a philosophy worked out by the Labour Government, and the longterm contracts. He said that there was over £55,000,000 in reserve in the dairy industry and meat and wool pools to meet any recession.