NEW ZEALAND

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 134, 3 December 1938, Page 24

NEW ZEALAND

AS SEEN BY A CANADIAN

INTERNAL & FOREIGN POLICY

POSITION SURVEYED

Of all the Dominions, New Zealand is the most closely and most willingly bound to England, writes Professor P. E. Corbett, of McGill University, in the "Winnipeg Free Press." (Professor Corbett was one of the Canadian delegation ,to the recent British Commonwealth Relations Conference at Sydney.) So indifferent is she to the indicia of independence that, far from adopting the Statute of Westminster, she is more than a little doubtful whether the Imperial Conference Report of 1926, with its emphasis on autonomy and equality, was a good thing. As one of her writers puts it, she is "the daughter-nation that preferred not to smoke and drink with her emancipated sisters, that shuddered a little and drew her garments somewhat closer when Canada and South Africa began to saunter on the boulevards of the world."

There are profound reasons for this colonial-mindedness. As a country of European settlement New Zealand is in her early youth, having still two years to go before she completes a century of British sovereignty. She has suffered no racial conflict of loyalties, since 94 per cent, of her people trace their origin to the United Kingdom. She has had no great neighbour to disturb the inherited English institutions and customs with lew devices of governments and strange habits of life and speech. She looks up to the English. Almost, but not quite (for there have been some recent signs of more indei pendent judgment) she accepts things I English as by definition good. CONSCIOUS OF WEAKNESS. She is a small country with a population just over sixteen hundred thousand, and she is humbly conscious of her weakness. She depends for her livelihood and development upon the United Kingdom, where she sells between 75 and 80 per cent, of her exports, and whence she has drawn 54 per cent of her Public Debt.

Yet, with all her modest recognition of youth, inexperience, and dependence, New Zealand has her own ideas about the objects of social and political organisation and the detailed means of accomplishing them. Long before the end of the nineteenth century she abandoned the entire laissezfaire doctrine of government and set about the development of one of the world's most advanced social democracies. In New Zealand, even more clearly than in Australia, it is the prime duty of government to secure for every citizen a decent standard of living. Along this road she has gone much further than England. Recently also, under her Labour Government, she has taken a strong line about the duty of the State in the community of nations, has directed sharp criticism at the foreign policy of her Mother Country, and propounded a far-reach-ing scheme to reorganise the League of Nations into an effective instrument of world government. STATE PLAYS ACTIVE PART. The most striking feature of the human scene in New Zealand is the pre-eminent part played by the State in industrial, commercial, and financial activity. The entire railway system is public property; so also are the telegraph and telephone; the development and transmisison of electric power is a State monopoly; since 1894 the Government has been advancing money on easy terms for house-build-ing, and thousands of homes have been built under long-term mortgage to the State; the present Labour Government is meeting an acute shortage of housing by construction on its own account for rental to wage-earners. A Department of Government under the Minister of Marketing purchases and sells all dairy produce destined for export; a separate Internal Marketing Department controls the domestic price and distribution of dairy produce, eggs, honey, fruit, and any other foodstuffs specified by the Governor-Gene-ral in Council. When it is remembered that in 1937 exports of butter and cheese reached a value of roughly ninety million dollars, that is to say, a third of New Zealand's total export trade, the importance of this new form of Governmental activity can be realised. In addition, the export of meat and of fruit is under two boards of control, while wheat, poultry, and tobacco boards control the internal distribution of these commodities. j SOCIALISM STRIDES AHEAD. Wages and working conditions in. industry are prescribed from time to time by the national Arbitration Court. The standard working week is forty hours, though the Arbitration Court may and does permit increases up to forty-four hours where it finds that an industry requires such extension. For shop and office employees a 44-hour week is prescribed. The minimum wage for unskilled labour is forty-six cents an hour, for skilled labour fifty-five cents. There are national systems of unemployment insurance, old-age and invalidity pensions, and a liberal scheme of State medicine and sickness benefits is to come into operation in April, 1939, with the establishment of a new Social Security Department.

Practical Socialism has thus made great strides in New Zealand. What of j the cost? The creditors of the Dominion are worried over the rapid development of social services, and its securities have been falling on the London market. There is to be an election in October, the principal issue being continued expansion of Government activity or a return to relative conservatism. Present expectations, however, are strongly in favour of the Labour Government, and there is scant promise of comfort for the rentier. It looks as if, in the management of her domestic affairs, New Zealand would continue to go her own way. j TAKES THE LEAGUE LINE. | As for foreign policy, an independent outlook in that sphere first became marked when, in Novembc- 1935, the present Administration, which is New Zealand's first Labour Government, took office. It had promised its electors vigorous support of the principle of collective security, and took advantage of membership in the Council of the League of Nations to implement the promise. Through its representative in the Council it urged in 1936 the continuance and reinforcement of sanctions against Italy, only consenting to their termination in deference to the strong majority against them, and in consideration of New Zealand's remoteness from the conflict and comparative immunity from the risks of coercive action. Two years later the New Zealand delegate energetically opposed the movement led by Great Britain to secure a blessing from the League for recognition of the conquest of Abyssinia.

On the question of the revision of the Covenant, the Dominion has submitted an outspoken brief in favour of immediate and automatic sanctions, to be backed up, if necessary, by military action. It is prepared to participate in the institution of an international force for the prevention of aggression and, by way of substituting

peaceful change for war, advocates a tribunal to examine and remedy the grievances of States whose national development is unjustly retarded by the vested rights of other nations. CONTRAST WITH AUSTRALIA. The complete identification of the New Zealand Labour Party with the principle of collective security makes a vivid contrast with the isolationism which inspired Parliamentary Labour in Australia to take a decided stand against sanctions in the Abyssinian episode. The difference is characteristic. The doctrine of the class-war is deeply embedded in the political mind of Australian Labour, and with it goes more than a little suspicion of the League as a capitalist organ for the protection of the status quo. On the contrary, the workers of New Zealand look upon Geneva as an essential mechanism for the advancement of their common cause with left-wing democracy everywhere.

New Zealand's antagonism to the course of condonement and compromise must not be interpreted, however, as a general revolt against British leadership in foreign policy. The Government is doing what it can to influence the ultimate direction of that leadership, but its swift assurance of support in the event of war arising out of the Czech crisis shows conclusively that this "daughter nation" is ready to share the consequences even of Britain's mistakes. Two factors explain the warmth of that response, one emotional and spiritual, the other material. The first is a powerful loyalty to the family "home"; the second is the belief that, while the world can be made finally safe only by a collective system embracing even the United States, yet, in the dangers of the present, Great Britain is still the first line of defence for her isolated Dominion in the Pacific.