TYRE INDUSTRY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 June 1938, Page 8

TYRE INDUSTRY

STATEMENT BY MINISTER OF COMMERCE f NO THOUGHT OF EXCLUDING IMPORTS. REPLY TO THE CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. “The Chambers of Commerce—New Zealanders who furiously oppose every proposal to establish manufacturing industries in New Zealand—have frightened themselves into a panic,” said the Minister of Industries and Commerce, the Hon D. G. Sullivan, in a statement last night concerning the possibility of the establishment of a tyre manufacturing industry in New Zealand. “They use the term ‘tyre monopoly’ as indicating the intentions of the Government, but no such proposal has ever been considered by the Government or by myself. “It is perfectly true,” continued Mr Sullivan, “that the Bureau of Industry and the Department of Industries and Commerce have been examining the possibility of establishing on an economic basis an industry for the manufacture of rubber goods, including tyres. It is equally true that I personally, as Minister of Industries and Commerce, am desirous of establishing the industry, but I repeat that neither myself nor the Government has ever thought of prohibiting imports, anxious though I am as a New Zealander to have as much work done in this country as is reasonably possible. That desire will be shared by every New Zealander who loves his country, for its realisation is indispensable to the economic welfare of New Zealand and and its people. “The inevitability of additional manufacturing industries being established in New Zealand has been recognised by the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Mr Neville Chamberlain,” said Mr Sullivan, “and I am sure that no British Government will take exception to such Dominion endeavour. The tyre industry has been licensed under the Industrial Efficiency Act because it would not be economic to allow more than one factory or two at the most if the industry is to be run on economic lines. It was for that and no other reason that the industry was licensed. “The Chambers of Commerce do not appear to have the interests of New Zealand at heart and their ideal appears to be to keep our country a primary producing country, but in this they are in a hopeless minority. The Government of New Zealand is on the best terms with the people of the United Kingdom and the Empire as a whole.”