STRONG PROTEST

Hokitika Guardian, 20 September 1933, Page 4

STRONG PROTEST

BY N.Z. MANUFACTURERS

(Per Press Association, Copyright),

CHRISTCHURCH., September 19. Mr A. E. Mancter, general secretary to the New Zealand Manufacturers’ Federation, makes the following statement concerning the conditions in the? specifications tor the new Welliogton railway- station: “We protested against the grossly unfair conditions specified for Wellington’s new railway station ,namely, that any • imported materials should be exempt from the exchange, the customs and the sales tax, while competing against the products or our own industries. Our products are still subject to all three of these charges. ‘ 1

“We protested to the Minister of Finance (Mr Coates), who replied that it was the responsibility of the Railways Board; but we have yet to learn when the Railways Board was given the power to exempt imported goods from the sales tax, and, at the same time, to declare that New Zealand goods shall be subject to the sales tax as usual. - If this power has been given to the Board, it has surely been done without Parliamentary sane tion. Our .protest has been made. The Minister' and the general manager of railways have both replied with platitudes and vague assurances, which amount to no mote than that the matyter Will he “kept steadily in. view. What the manufacturers n«d the merchants holding stocks in New Zealand require is not merely a Vague expression of goodwill, hut an alteration of the conditions under which they are placed at so great a disadvantage tendering. , . <•.