The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, JUNE 29, 1929 FAIR TERMS FOR INDUSTRY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 702, 29 June 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, JUNE 29, 1929 FAIR TERMS FOR INDUSTRY

pEOPLE obsessed with threadbare prejudices against the use of ■1 tariffs in any form as an aid to industry are unlikely to be impressed with the result of a deputation taken during the week tcfttvo Ministers of the Crown who were asked by representatives ot the New Zealand Manufacturers’ Association to consider the establishment of a tariff board to regulate tariffs on a more satisfactory and scientific basis than hitherto. They are no more likely to be impressed by the note of qualified approval struck by the Ministers than they are by the deep significance of the fact that, within a couple of days, Parliament, immediately after opening, was once again discussing that irksome hut ever present theme, unemployment. Thinking people, however, cannot overlook the significance of the relationship. In view of the unreasoning attitude customarily adopted by conservative observers toward any suggestion that the country should make an organised attempt to help its industries in the same way that it tries to help the orchardist, the bee-farmer, the dairyman and the wheatgrower, hostility to the principle advocated by the manufacturers was no more surprising than the manner in "which the proposed method of its expression was deliberately misconstrued. Champions of the* movement for the development of New Zealand industries, and believers in the radical notion that in this country there are craftsmen capable of producing the equal in fabric, wood or steel of the rival commodities manufactured outside, are unlikely to be discouraged by the old, familiar echoes which constitute the bulk of present opposition. In the meantime it is sufficient to their purpose that two Ministers, the Lion. J. G. Cobbe, a farmer, and the Hon. W. B. Taverner, an accountant, have been good enough, without being immoderately enthusiastic, to promise a thorough examination of the issues involved. If that investigation is sufficiently free and impartial, it can have only one sequel, the conclusion that a tariff board as advocated will do much to help such New Zealand industries as deserve support, while at the same time it will, given opportunity, remove the sustained misconception that all the activities ot any tariff board would be devoted purposefully and nefariously against the interests of the primary producers or the people as a whole.

In the obstructive arguments employed against New Zealand industry s efforts to raise its status, there appears to he deliberate neglect of the fact that establishment of a soundly constituted tariff hoard would result in the rationalisation of industry, a process under which only the fit and worthy could survive. The proposed tariff board would be no group of a-raiable but detached theorists scampering about the country like a Minister of the Crown on tour, hut would devote to its task the most highly developed powers of analytical study. Under such a system, the industry that deliberately attempted to raise costs against the local consumer under the shelter of a tariff wall could not survive twelve months before the helpful barrier was lowered —and lowered permanently. The industry in which backward methods, poor organisation or diffusion of effort negatived efforts to meet outside competition, would he forced to mend its wavs or retire from the field.

Correspondingly, those factories in which locally-made goods of satisfactory quality were having an uphill fight against outside commodities favoured by low wages or “dumping” policies should be given deserved assistance. In any assessment of the value of a rationally arranged tariff selieme, its bearing on unemployment must not he overlooked, otherwise one of its most beneficent features will be ignored. For this reason Labour has a direct interest in the proposals put forward by the manufacturers. There are factories in Auckland todav that close every Saturday morning because there is not the work to sustain them over a full week. How much better the position would be for the employees of those concerns, large or small as they may be, if there was some sort of protection against an outside article that is frequently low-grade, and often made by labour operatives whose standards of living are such as we should never desire to encourage in this country. Competition based on low standards of living, as so much competition is, must always he destructive. And it would be the task of the tariff board to decide what outside competition was legitimate and stimulating, and what was fundamentally unfair. New Zealand cannot afford to remain isolated, nor to continue her system of adjusting tariffs from the more or less academic viewpoint of departmental officials in a Government office m Wellington. In the last twenty years the tariff system has been overhauled three times, and in no instance has there been evidence of a thorough analytical examination of local industrial requirements. Onlookers are left with the unpleasant impressi°n that the national aspirations of New Zealand are subordinared to the immediate necessities of a politician’s budget, and that tor all the average politician cared, it would not much matter if Auckland still imported bricks for its buildings from Australia or England, as it did before some enterprising pioneer of a large local industry discovered that very good bricks could be made on the spot.