ECONOMIC CONTROL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 July 1938, Page 7

ECONOMIC CONTROL

MINISTER DEFENDS LABOUR POLICY RATIONALISATION ISSUE. SIMILAR PROGRESS IN MANY COUNTRIES. (By Telegraph —Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. The opinion that in co-ordinating transport and rationalising industry New Zealand was merely following a trend that was well established in other countries was expressed by the Minister of Railways, the Hon D. G. Sullivan, during the Address-in-Reply debate'in the House of Representatives yesterday. Mr Sullivan said that the Opposition had made a grave tactical blunder in including in its no-confid-ence amendment a reference to the Bureau of Industries, because any attempt to upset the work done under the industrial legislation would be met by industry with fierce antagonism. Mr Sullivan said that the charge of socialisation raised by the Opposition was merely a fictitious' issue created because the Opposition could not afford to attack the Government on its actual legislation. The true issue, and the one which would be recognised by the electorate, was whether or not the Government was right in its policy of redistributing the national wealth in the way it was doing. “The co-ordination of transport services running alongside the railways is working out very well indeed,” said Mr Sullivan. “Similar action has been taken in every other (ftuntry where an intelligent interest is taken in transport. In Great Britain the railways have taken the line of absorbing competitive services by buying them out and thus cutting out duplication. Road and other transport has been adjusted to the railways. In New Zealand, where the railways are nationally owned, it is the rational thing that that should be done by the Government.”

“HARMONY AND SATISFACTION.” The clause in the amendment relating to the Bureau of Industry would put fear into thousands of business men throughout the country, Mr Sullivan said. The legislation of the Government had brought order out of chaos and had brought about an unprecedented harmony and satisfaction in every industry dealt with. To abolish it would be to rouse the opposition of thousands of men and women in industry. He had hundreds of letters expressing in the strongest terms approval of what had been done, among them letters from the wheat, flour and baking industries, from the petrol resellers’ organisation, and from the Manufacturers’ Federation and many of its branches. If the Opposition threw industry back into the old cannibalism, it would make a political blunder of the first magnitude. “On the question of the rationalisation of industry, the Opposition appears to be living in the Dark Ages,” said Mr Sullivan. “There has been rationalisation of industry in almost every other country.” The Leader of the Opposition, the Hon A. Hamilton: “But is has been done by private enterprise.” Mr Sullivan: “Yes, that is the danger. We don’t impose rationalisation from above, but bring every section of the industry into the discussion first, and safeguard the country as a whole.” Mr Hamilton: “Other governments are not buying their competitors out.” Mr Sullivan: “No! Worse than that. They are forcing thepi out in many instances.” A voice: “That is happening here, too.”

Mr Sullivan: “Will you give one instance of that?”

Mr S. G. Holland (Opposition, Christchurch North): “A. H. Turnbull and Co were forced out of the butter business.” Mr Sullivan said that the case of Turnbull and Co had been given the closest and most sympathetic consideration by the Minister of Marketing, the Hon W. Nash, who would be able to *give a- complete answer to the charge. “The new legislation is as milk and water compared with the dictatorial powers allowed the previous Government under the Board of Trade Act, Mr Sullivan 'concluded. “There was no limit to its powers under that legislation. I say definitely that if not 100 per cent, nearly 100 per cent of the people with whom we have dealt are satisfied. The Opposition cannot expect to upset that work without arousing fierce antagonism.”

THE PEOPLE AND MONOPOLIES. Control of industry by a central authority was defended by Mr G. H. O. Wilson (Government, Rangitikei). “The Bureau of Industry,” he said, “will preserve the rights of the people to an extent that private monopolies will never do.”

Mr Wilson said that even if steps were taken to repeal the Board of Trade Act and the legislation passed by the Government relating to the control of industry there would be very little freedom of enterprise for the individual. More and more was the control of business getting into small groups, and less and less was it becoming possible for the individual to have any say in the control of the concern he was interested in.

“Monopolies and vested interests are not interested in individual freedom of enterprise,” said Mr Wilson. “If business is left entirely to itself there will be a far greater loss of freedom than there is under existing conditions. The present Government has assisted the people to keep control over its own affairs. The pharmacy business is a case in point. The chemists were in danger of being absorbed by a large English firm of chain store chemists, but today they are protected from absorption by a monopoly. That is one result of the operations of the Industrial Efficiency Act. “The issue is not whether we shall have freedom and individuality or Socialism, but whether the control shall be by a small monopolistic group concerned with its own interests or by

a central authority responsible to the community at large through its elected representatives to Parliament. Control of industry by small groups is not in the interests of the wage earner or the people.”