PRIVATE ENTERPRISE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 February 1940, Page 5

PRIVATE ENTERPRISE

RELIEF FROM RESTRICTIONS NEEDED. ADDRESS TO THE SOCIETY OF ACCOUNTANTS. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON. This Day. Public revenues were almost wholly provided by private enterprise, and if the desired recovery in the Dominion’s affairs was to be effected, private enterprise must be freed as early as possible from the present methods of undue State control, restriction and interference with which it was at present beset, Mr W. R. Brown, president of the New Zealand Society of Accountants observed in his address at the annual conference of that organisation yesterday. To assist industry, both primary and secondary, to recover from the blows .of the past twenty years, and to stimulate an increase in revenue-producing activity, it might be found necessary to raise a further external loan for this specific purpose. To advocate additional borrowing at the present time especially, in view of previous remarks made about debt, might appear inconsistent, but desperate problems required desperate remedies, and Mr Brown said he felt that the most desperate problem facing the Dominion today was the necessity for more freedom of action for private enterprise. Immediate steps should be taken to ensure that raw materials for manufacturing and stocks for trading were made available, otherwise the inference was obvious. In spite of all that could be claimed in favour of a better distribution of the national income, the needless dissipation of reserves, whether national or private, and a slackening off in the effort to produce, must in the long run lead to greater difficulties than would have been the case had sound business principles prevailed.