TARIFF WALLS.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 December 1921, Page 6

TARIFF WALLS.

NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIA. AN OPPORTUNITY THAT WAS MISSED. •‘New Zealand and Australia are linked together indissolubly under the name ‘Anzac.’ Statesmanship must have been surely dead when it occurred tr no one that New Zealand on tariff matters might be treated as part of the Commonwealth.’’ The foregoing statement was made to a Dominion representative on Wednesday. The speaker was a well-known Australian business man who does not wish his name published. ‘‘New Zealanders complain that Australia in its tariff treats the Dominion as a foreign country,” he said. ’‘There is justice in the complaint, and the humiliation rests upon the Commonwealth, and particularly upon its rulers, ever, if politicians are not conscious of it. It is remarkable—and more discreditable than remarkable—that during the long course of the tariff debates in both Houses of Parliament, the name of New Zealand was scarcely mentioned. Here was a fine opportunity for the Government of the larger of the two Dominions to set an example by an expression of kinship that would have some meaning in it.” The visitor added that both the countries were young, peopled by the British race, and both were dependent for their welfare on primary production. “It is better that people in other parts of the Empire should not know that paltry jealousies and craven fears lead to a fiscal policy which regards the two countries as having no bond between them,” he said in conclusion.