PRIVATE ENTERPRISE

Hokitika Guardian, 12 March 1930, Page 3

PRIVATE ENTERPRISE

DEMANDS FAIR FIELD,

PRIME MINISTER’S SUPPORT

i Associated Chambers of Commerce). ,A little more than a year ago—on February Oth, 1929, to be precise— a very large deputation of business and professional men, Representative of ail ..arts of tin- Dominion, waited upon "Mr .Jos-ph Ward, who two months previously had been installed in the •fiico of Prim . Minister in succession to the Edit Hon. J. G. Coates, with a request that he would give effect, vim ail convenient speed, 10 the opino;is he had expressed from time to iime. concerning the uniair eonipeti- . .. oy >tahe and Local Body undertakings with legitimate private entern>e. Air C. P. Agar, now the President of' the Associated Chambers of omm-erc-e of New Zealand, was the principal spokesman on behalf of the deputation, and having presented very lucidly the case against promiscuous State a,id Local Body trading ho submitted to the Minister the following resolution adopted by the Nineteen Twenty-Eight Committee., an organisation now absorbed by the Associated Chambers of Commerce:—

“This Conference congratulates the Government on the recent utterances of , Cabinet Ministers definitely deprecating Government competition and interference with legitimate private trading aricj business and professional .enterprise. It assumes from those utt-rances ' i " ,! there will ..be no further extension of competition by Government .Departments in trading, and that the operations of such trading departments as have been shown to compete unfairly with the legitimate business of subjects of theState will be curtailed and discontinued; also that where special control legislation . and restrictive regulations exist which destroy initiative and repress enterprise in the professions, industries and business concerns of the Dominion, without any compensating advantage to the community, but to its commercial disadvantage, these will be repealed at an early date, and the Conference assures the Government that it will give all assistance in preparing- and forwarding information towards this end, if it is desired to do so.”

fn conclusion Mr Agar expressed a hope that Sir. Joseph Ward’s very !ong association with business and his realisation of the need and value of individual effort would ensure the country agunst Vue blighting influences of unnecessary State 'interference with private enterprise. In the course of his reply to Mr Agar's representations the Prime Minister, in addition to endorsing the views expressed by the spokesman of the deputation, referred briefly to observations of his .own on the subject. iOis personal feeling was, he said, that the Great War, and the new and grave problems it brought in its train, were largely responsible for •'l’o strange and difficult conditions that were besetting some of the younger countries. He had been/'comparatively lately, in the United States of America and in Canada, and from personal investigation and inquiry in these countries lie was driven to the conclusion that they were not suffering nearly so much from the aftermath of the war as was New Zealand, ■ iid. of course, the Mother Country. In the other countries he had mentioned there had' been tremendous prosperity in their commercial life, and he was satisfied that New Zealand, whoever its rulers might be, would have to institute a policy of enterprise and courage before it would definitely enjoy the measures of commercial security and general prosperity these other countries passessed. The Government might provide facilities towards this end, hut the individual would have to turn them to account. i

Candour and harmony between Da,hour and Capital, the Minister went on to say, were the prime factors towards a prosperous nation. He was satisfied that many of the business people in Nqw Zealand, for quite a long time, had been suffering encroachments from one source or another which were not in the best interests of the community. The Mother Country had been suffering in the same way, as the result of the war conditions, but the people there had begun to realise that what may he 'permissible, or even desirable, in circumstances of emergency, may be flagrantly undesirable when normal

conditions were restored. He thought he might, without any impropriety, point to the incongruity of a mart; irt business paying all the taxation that wa s going while some State Department close by in the same line . of business paid neither income-tax nor land tax, and traded bn cheap Stale money. No one could make him hei.evc that in any of the cities of- fiefr Zealand it was a. fair thing for mu| icipalities to compete against rath; payers in their own town when tl)e municipalities paid no license, rip ih; come tax, no land tax and rib rates on the premises they -occupied. Eefi turning to tile subject in a latet part of his-speech, Sir Joseph said He hoped, with the assistance of his coll* leagues, the members of all. of the House, and the fair-minded public, to reach a solution of . thb problem in the near future. ’ From all this it is obvious enough that Sir Joseph Ward and his colleagues stand committed to - legislation which will give to legitimate,,;private enterprise protection from urtf, air State and municipal activities.* A Bill towards this end was drafted iluring last year’s session of Parliaments but Sir .Joseph Ward s illness 'st.ayba its further progress. Presumably/-. ;S fullv considered measure will bo prbduced during the approaching Session, Gitrion.sly enough a similar fate befoj ■i Rill of the same character by Mr A. D. McLeod during the s£l* sion of 1928. Then the handy- rfi&A if the Reform Government, Mr. U<t; T eod had wrestled with the ilitridiiciies of his measure for weeks On hh’d - illy to find, as members of. th§ House were hurrying away to tlipir •lectnrates,. that there was ho for it on the Order Paper. Sir Joseph Ward is not likely to find his Bill delayed in this fiishion ot in other fashion. -He end his .party stand committed, as Mr Coates, this predecessor in-office does, to an able adjustment of the relations' He; tween State and municipal enterdhjfo and private lenteiprise. New Zoi\liii|>j[ has loitered far too long in roturnin| to pre-war conditions in. this respect, England, Canada, the United States and practically all Eastern Europei|H countries have adjusted theuiseivefc E& the conditions of a world at New Zealand cannot afford to start, longer outside this progressive circle.