WHO SAYS WHAT WE NEED?

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 57, 4 September 1943, Page 6

WHO SAYS WHAT WE NEED?

The fable of the fox who lost his tail in a trap is called to mind by Mr. Nash's claim that other countries envy New Zealand's controls and wish they could get them with the consent of their peoples. In New Zealand, said Mr. Nash, they imported what the people needed and not what some could make a profit out of. The fox of the fable, when he had lost his tail, tried to persuade all the other foxes to get rid of theirs also. He said what a nuisance a' tail was and how lucky he was to be without it. "If I had lost my tail I would agree," said an old grey fox, "but until I do I vote for tails." And we think that the countries who envy New Zealand's control will echo the words of the old grey fox. New Zealand's loss of free importing, like the fox's loss of his tail, was not a ' deliberate surrender. The import freedom was cut off in a trap that was sprung in December, 1938, after Government speakers had declared that everything was quite right (that was during the last General Election). Suddenly importers and consumers woke up to find that this trap of "spending for prosperity" had closed on them and left them without the freedom to decide what they -would buy with their own earnings, and with a limitation of the right to use their own money.

And what are the wonderful advantages of this import control that the world envies New Zealand? We do not refer to wartime control, for that is practically universal and necessary, like other wartime restrictions; but our control is a pre-war imposition, and evidently intended for post-war use. We import what the people need, says Mr, Nash. Do we? Are not many of our present acute shortages of neces-

saries—personal and household goods and even industrial requirements— more acute than they should be because in the pre-war and early war periods importers were hindered from importing what they knew the people needed? Stocks were depleted and warehouses emptied, and commercial men can give instance after instance of permission given to import only when the supplying countries had declined to export. The implied slur on the profit-making importers is a specious argument. Importers make profits only if they import what the people need and are willing \to buy. A free-buying system enables every buyer to. register a vote for what he needs and to have his say in the price and conditions of buying. If the aim is really to import what the people need, why not let them decide through customer pressure upon the traders? As it is, who says what the people need and shall have? The Minister of Customs and some of his officers. The Minister's statement should be revised to read: "New Zealand imports what the Minister thinks they should need." All who agree that the Minister knows better than they do, can agree also with the fox that lost his tail.