PETROL SITUATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 223, 19 September 1940, Page 8

PETROL SITUATION.

EASEMENT URGED.

EFFECT ON ECONOMIC LIFE. WELLINGTON, this day. Claiming that the supplies of petrol issued in New Zealand were so low that the economic life of the country was being affected, the New Zealand Motor Trade Federation, at its annual meeting this morning, supported the president, Mr. C. R. Edmond, in his statement that another million gallons a month wae required.

Mr. Edmond produced a letter from a large British motor manufacturer in which an appeal was made for a market in New Zealand. "We would like to respond to that appeal, but cannot," he said, "unless there is some easement in the petrol situation. . On the one hand we. have the High Commissioner for the United Kingdom telling ue we must conserve petrol, and on the other' one of the leading motor manufacturers in England pleading with us to buy their goods. There must be some place, in the .middle where we can meet and do both thi nge."

Mr. W. E. Hill said the industry had never opposed petrol rationing as a. principle, but it contended there was a point beyond which rationing could not go without serious effect on the economic life of the Dominion.—{Press Asen.)