TYRE MANUFACTURE

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 23, 27 July 1945, Page 8

TYRE MANUFACTURE

MR. NASH ON LONDON CABLE

. The Minister of Finance (Mr. Nash) gave a reply in the House of Representatives today to the statement cabled on behalf of certain British tyre manufacturers that they had not been consulted regarding the proposal to make motor tyres in New Zealand. The matter was raised in an urgent question from Mr. M. H. Oram (National, Manawatu), who called the Government's attention to the cable.

Mr. Nash replied that in the ten minutes available since he had received the question he had not been able to collect all the facts, but he could say that the Government was approached over the matter in 1937, and again in the following year, when proposals were placed before the Government.

Mr. W. J. Poison (National, Stratford): By whom?

Mr. Nash: A British company, and others, too.

"In 1939," he continued, "the Bureau of Industries called for applications for licences to manufacture tyres in New Zealand and advertised that fact. The obvious thing would be that tyre distributors in New Zealand would inform all their manufacturers. The Dominions Office in 1944 notified one English company of the proposal regarding tyre manufacture in New Zealand, andfjhe could not imagine the British authorities discriminating in favour of one company alone. The matter was discussed when he was in London in 1939, and igain by the Minister of Supply when he visited London this year.

"I could say in regard to two of the companies mentioned ir- the cable," concluded Mr. Nash, "that they have never done any business in the Dominion."