EMPIRE TRADE

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

EMPIRE TRADE

IMPORTS CONTROLS

CONTRARY TO PRINCIPLE

"The United Kingdom Manufacturers and New Zealand Representatives' Association learns with gratification that the Trades and Labour Council is in sympathy with the fundamental principle that it is in the interests of this Dominion to encourage and facilitate the spending of the residue of income derived from the sale of the Dominion's produce in Great Britain with the industries of Great Britain after the New Zealand Government has met its specific and recurring overseas commitments," says a statement issued by the association. "The association also subscribes to the opinion so frequently expressed by the Government that this Dominion should do everything in its power to ensure that the workers of Great Britain along with those of the Dominion, enjoy the highest standards of living.

"It has been stated by Ministers of the present Government of New Zealand that it is the prerogative of \he Government to determine and decide upon the classes of goods which shall be imported. This cuts across the vital principle enunciated in and secured for the people under Magna Carta. Surely the people of the Dominion are entitled to the privilege of choosing and deciding for themselves the types of commodities they desire to purchase, and the association firmly believes that the New Zealand Government has a specific duty to the people of this Dominion to provide facilities whereby members of the consumer public are ultimately enabled to buy that which their savings permit within the limits of desirable controls of any commodity imposed for economical reasons, and that selection shall not be confined to alternatives decided upon by the Government. It is a false premise to assume that the community shall not be permitted to purchase the type of goods which it, and the workers in particular, conscientiously believe are necessary to their comfort.

"The United Kingdom Manufacturers and New Zealand Representatives' Association acknowledges the propriety of the New Zealand Government's declared policy to establish secondary industries in this Dominion, but emphatically points out that the full prosecution of the present policy, the purchase of capital machinery, does not encourage the hope that it will enhance the purchasing power and standard of living of the majority of the workers of Great Britain.

"Finally, the assurance that New Zealand will spend the available lunds with Great Britain requires further enunciation and clarification. It is obvious that*if a full standard of living is to be enjoyed by the workers of New Zealand and Great Britain then the goods and commodities ' imported into New Zealand must, in their makeup and cost, include the maximum amount of labour. Moreover, the workers of Great Britain, through their respective employers, should be permitted to offer and sell the results of their labour to the New Zealander under no less favourable terms than their fellow-worker in the Dominion. If labour is truly democratic then it concedes the principle that the worker of one community shall not be penalised at the expense of another."