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Hokitika Guardian, 13 October 1927, Page 2

At the County Council meeting on Tuesday the Chairman put the facts about the effect of the increase of

customs duty on dredging and machinery very cogently. The imposition or the very high tariff proposed would bar any further development in large scale dredging in this territory. It seemed as though the tariff was framed to that end, for on expensive machinery such as is required for dredging on a large scale, a forty per cent, duty would range up to an enormous sum. And the effect of that possibility would mean the blocking of an industry, one which would employ much labor, and nearly all of it at high rates of pay. In addition, outside capital disposed to come into the Dominion and create trade and industry, would be blocked, so that actually the Government proposed to slam the door in the face of capital which would afford lucrative employment for labor, and prevent a great trading undertaking which would create business all round. The proposal seems so ill-advised as to suggest that the advisers of the Government in this matter did not know their business. Even now they arc refusing to class dredging plants for gold-min-ing as part and parcel of mining machinery, and so seek to perpetrate a further wrong. This unfriendly attitude must surely be placed to ignorance. It seems a pity that the Government should not seek advice in these matters from its mining advisers rather than from an official who is trained only to exact income irrespective of the rights of the case. In the present handling of the customs revision there have Ireen mistakes wholesale, and the Minister has been engaged principally in retreating from the official position first taken up. The advice tendered him has been very much awry and it can hardly be said the (Minister has cut a very dignified figure. The effect of theso retreats under compulsion has been that they are often compromises, with the object of saving the face of the (Minister or the Department, and that appears to Ire the case in regard to the refusal to place dredging plant in the same category as mining material. The Minister and his Department will not recognise the whole facts of the case. It is to bo hoped an opportunity will be afforded Mr Murdoch, County Chairman, to stress the whole position to the Ministry or its advisers so ns to bring home to them what is actually at issue, and so before it is too late, retrieve the situation and assure further mining developments for the district.