WHEELS OF INDUSTRY

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 600, 28 February 1929, Page 8

WHEELS OF INDUSTRY

IT is not uncommon for Cabinet Ministers and politicians to promise support for New Zealand industries. Unfortunately, their promises are more often platitudes than sincere assurances. Before the practical test of legislative performance promises are apt to disappear. So, to invest w r ith originality an assurance made yesterday, the Hon. J. G. Cobbe, who told the conference of the New Zealand Manufacturers’ Association that the new Government desired to foster New Zealand industries, must give the colour of reality by translating words into action. The prospect that this agreeable sequel may occur is “on the cards.” In recent weeks the Minister has paid visits to a number of industrial plants in various centres, including a number in Auckland, and he therefore spoke with some knowledge of what New Zealand manufacturers have accomplished, and of the form their aspirations and difficulties take. If the Minister—himself a business man with substantial retail interests - —is surprised at the finish and quality of Dominion products, it. follows that others, too, might profit from an investigation of the factoi-ies and their output. That the Minister was impressed by the excellent conditions tinder which the employees work—the factories of New Zealand are no longer iron sheds or shanties —is another heartening feature. In anticipating the outcome of a remit asking the conference to approve of a Tariff Board, the Minister invited the delegates to say what powers should be given the board, and who should be on it. It is only necessary to answer that the Tariff Board should be composed of men not shackled by hide-bound fiscal conventions and that it should have reasonable latitude for observation and action. The Tariff Board in Australia has achieved notable work. All that is necessary as a precaution is the enforcement against unscrupulous concerns of some such safeguarding provisions as are embodied in the Australian Tariff Board Act. 1924, which was framed fo prevent prices from rising behind a sheltering tariff. If the Minister is sincere, and the Government lends real aid, the factories of New Zealand may again show—as they did when immigrants poured in a few years ago—their capacity to absorb the surplus workers among the people.