Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1938. OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOURS.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 September 1938, Page 6

Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1938. OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOURS.

ZEALAND and Australia are mutually fortunate in being geographically next-door neighbours in the Pacific, and there will be full agreement in this country with the opinion expressed at a State luncheon in Wellington on Tuesday by the Deputy-Prime Minister of the Commonwealth, Sir Earle Page, that the two Dominions cannot have too many contacts, official and personal. There will be agreement, too, with much that the Australian Minister had to say on the subject of co-ordinated action by our countries in matters of defence and of economic development. Where defence is concerned, it is obvious that neither Australia nor New Zealand can be really secure unless its neighbour also is secure. The opportunity of planned co-operation with Australia on lines that will enable each Dominion to build up its population and extend the range of its economic and other activities is one to be welcomed unreservedly. The only limits to this co-operation are those of an equitable mutual understanding. In what he had to say about the developed and potential water-power resources of this country, and in other details of his speech, it was recognised fairly and freely by Sir Earle Page that New Zealand, like Australia, needs an’ unhampered scope for development. His observations on this subject showed a much better and more practical grasp of realities than was indicated in the official and skeletonised report of a discussion on New Zealand trade at the British Commonwealth Relations Conference on Tuesday. It was more than suggested in that report that if only she could obtain access to adequate external markets, New Zealand would be content indefinitely to rely mainly on the primary industries which are at present her economic mainstay. An appended suggestion that on account of the failure to build up an export of primary products to the East, this country “was most anxious to strengthen her trade ties with Australia’’ can only be described as ludicrous. For the good and sufficient reason that she is our principal competitor in the leading branches of our existing export trade, Australia is one of, the poorest possible markets for much of wliat New Zealand meantime has to sell. Entirely fantastic, too, was the question asked by someone at the Commonwealth Relations Conference whether New Zealand was prepared to do anything to remove hindrances to trade with Australia. Considering that New Zealand is and has been for some* time past buying between two and three times as much from Australia as she is able to sell to that country, this question must be classed as a brilliant effort of its somewhat astonishing kind. On account of the start Australia has gained in the expansion of secondary industries, we admittedly cannot expect to balance our trade with her for the time being. Even in dealing with a sister Dominion with whom we have so much in common, however, some limit must be placed upon willingness to accept a position of inferiority and subordination. No other aim is conceivable for New Zealand than that of amending progressively, and as rapidly as is reasonably possible, the conditions in which we are at present trading with Australia. At a long view it counts for a great deal that in some important respects, as Sir Earle Page acknowledged in what he had to say about, water power, New Zealand is better endowed and placed to develop secondary industries than is the Commonwealth. The question if rivalry should not be allowed to enter, and it is simply extraordinary to find it being dragged in at a conference like that, now sitting in New South'Wales. It is entirely open to the two Dominions to co-operate to their mutual benefit, and in doing so to correct such undesirable disparities as appear in their present balance of trade. It is certainly necessary that New Zealand should make the most of her primary industries, but if she made these industries permanently her almost exclusive concern, she would condemn herself to economic and national weakness, and as a country necessarily of small population would have poor prospects of defending herself against attack by any formidable aggressor. It is evidently not more in the interests of the Empire generally than in those of New Zealand that this melancholy state of affairs should be brought about.