NEW ZEALAND BACKWARD

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 746, 20 August 1929, Page 11

NEW ZEALAND BACKWARD

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT NEED Faults in the relation between New Zealand and national prosperity were revealed in an address to the KarangaHape Road Business Promotion Society today. Mr. N. G. Cribble* secretary to the New Zealand Land Development League, was the speaker. New Zealand’s immense natural advantages were described, but Mr. Cribble fotnd that the Dominion was lacking in a proper national spirit. Roughly, two-thirds of New Zealand were producing nothing, he said, and la,rge areas in the Auckland Province were being wasted. Mr. Cribble instanced the drop in the rate of growth in population. “There is something wrong when a land with such advantages has unemployment, millions of acres of undeveloped land and more money in the banks than the people know what to do with,” he said. “National efficiency is wholly dependent on personal efficiency, and, applied with a national spirit, our efficiency could get somewhere.” Mentioning the 10 per cent, increase in European competition in dairy produce, Mr. Cribble explained “back-to-the-land” success in Greece, Rumania, Czecho-Slovakia and Poland. “We New Zealanders used to think we were the greatest colonisers of the world,” he said, “but we do not appreciate what concerted effort could do. I shall go as far as to say that our existence depends on this realisation.”