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Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 208, 18 September 1937, Page 7

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Our Qwn Correspondeut.1

GOVERNMENT SCHEME

What is Value of Mr. Nash's Meat Agreement?

" a ■* PARLIAMENT HRLACTIYE

(Frero

WELLINGTON, This Day. Beneath the apparontly placid manner in which the Government leaders are steoring the ship of State towaTds tha bright promise of a brand-new destiny there are very active doings hero just now. Perhaps tho most eignilicant of thein is the strenuous search which is being mado i'or avonues of employment for additional mcn in order to lower the obsinately high number of workers who continuo on sustenance and to check the rccent tenden-cy of unemploymcnt ligures to grow. In the effort towards this end fow industries aro being overlooked, and some curious things have been revealed. One of the earlier and now diecredited moves was to promote employment iu the iilm industry by having cinema fiims duplieated in the conntry. Under this system only one print of the iilm is imported and all othors used in tho picture theatres of the country aro manufactured on the spot. The system is in vogue in Australia, at least to some extent, and it is thoroughly dis- ; approved by the New Zealand iilm ex- j hibitors on tho ground that they now i obtain satisfactory prints of the films i they run through their projectors, but that the experience in Australia' is that locally-duplicated fllms aro not likely to come up to the desired standard. In justice to the Government it must ! be said that this plan was not orlginally j its own idea, but once it was seen it was seized on and for a time looked likely to come into being. However, tho overwhelming testimony that Austra-lian-made prints are not what they might be at length turned the scale. Car-Assembly Scheme. In another field the Government has been exploring for some time and that is the much more important inotor industry. The matter has been in tho hands of Mr Nash for some time. Tlie scheme is to import tho large number of British motor-cars "in shell," as the motor trade terms it, which meana that tho assenibling of tho cars begun during tho tenuve of office of Mr Coates would be continued on a much wider scale. Weldiug, for instance, would have to be done here and the whole car virtually built up in this country. The scheme was strongly talcen up by the Government, but Mr Nash's contacts with the British motor industry d? not seem to have been highly successful, and up to now the conceesions which he appears to have demanded as of right have not been obtained. The plan is by no means dropped, and if anything is to be. gaugid from the l'act that Ministers aro still unable to give assuranees to somewhat uneasy business men, the Minister of Finance still h.opes to revive it in some forrn, Objections to the plan are, quite simply, the faet that it robs the 'British motor-manufacturer of mauy of thc benefits of large-scale production and of the elaborate and highly-eificient machines which he is able to employ becauso of the size of his business. In the caso of welding, for instance, thc car bodies in Englaud are electrieally handled, while here hand-welding would have to be carried out, a much slower and vastly moro expensive process than that of the big factories at Home. In the field of agriculture, the Government has takou credit to itself fqr the meat agreement which Mr. Nash brought back from London. The value of the agreement is held in well-in-forcned circles hero to be extremely doubtful. Thero is the right to export an increased quota of meat to Englaud, it is truo, and thus on the face of it tho poininion is in a bettcr position than formorly. However, it is only an appurent improvoment, for it is confidently declared here by thoso who sliQuld know that New Zealand farmers will bo unable to fiU the new a'nd increased quota becauso they are unable to fill the old one. That, of eourso, means that tho Government is deluding itself over the improvement it has brought to tho stock farmcr, or else misleading tlie people, which does not appoar to be likely. Of another significant thing nothing has so far been revealed. This is the fact that under the Ottawa Agree. ments, New Zealand having obtained an increased quota on the British nmrket, Australia has had to be given one also. Reliable advice to those in toucb with Australian production is that Australia will fiU this higher quota. So it is possible that Mr. Nash's ten* months trip to Englaud, Europe and America will end with the ironieal fact of establishing Australia in n better position and littlo else. These things, in their various fields, go to show that thq Government is sifilering checks iu its offorts to better the lot of the New Zealand worker, but it would be foolish to suggest that it has for a inoment rcgarded itself as cliockmatod. Tho spirit of the Goverumout is revealed iu the rccent doclaration of the Minister of Mines, who is projnoting a new oil Bi.ll, that ho "will drill down as far as Amorica it neccssary" but is detcrminod to get oil from Taranaki. It is to be scco, also, in the ingenious manner in which the new plan to mdnufacture tyres in this country is being pushed. Some time ago the Government invited applieatious from firma interested in munufacturjng tyros in New Zealand, and the rcquest aroused wirtn interest. There was, it appeared, n considerable suin of oionoy availablo for investment here under safeguards such as n monopoly of tho market for a shorfc timo. For one reason or boother disquict began to bo felt, and the field seems to have been more pr less abandond to a syndicate which is negotiating with a well-known Amorican firm in tho efGort to induce it to start operalions here. At this stage, it seems, the Government had the notion it prught enter

the field itself, and set about obtaining a forinula for the manufacture of tyres. This was douo (whethor it was iutendcd to be done or not) by means of obtaining from companies a statoment of the various materials used in manufacture merely from the point of view of assessing the British Empira workmanship in the finished product, It seems a strange way of going about the matter, but stranger things are happening here to-day. Tn one industry, for instance, the locally-assembled material does not quite reach the desired percentage of British material and workmanship, so a second coat of paint is being added to Ihe completcd article. Resourceful and varicd as are the Government 's plans, it is clear that they are not working out to date. "What lies in the future, of course, is a matter which can be measured ouly by their adventurousness and their willing-i ness to incur new national burdsns. j