STATE CONTROL

Waikato Times, Volume 129, Issue 21582, 19 November 1941, Page 4

STATE CONTROL

CONDUCT OF INDUSTRY NECESSITY AFTER WAR MINISTER’S DECLARATION ROTORUA, Wednesday In his address when he opened the conference of the New Zealand Manufacturers’ Federation at Wairakei last night the Minister of Industries and Commerce, the Hon. D. G. Sullivan, said that proposals for providing better machinery for the Industrial Efficiency Act were under consideration. “There are individuals and groups of individuals both here and in other lands who have firmly fixed their faith in what they call freedom,” said the Minister. “What is that freedom ? Is it not freedom to exploit, to cut or unduly raise prices, to create uneconomic competition, and redundancy ? Actually, it is not freedom. It is licence. Today we are directing our energies to the successful prosecution of the war. To that end all our activity must be subject to co-ordinated control. “Insofar as control is essential for war, and regulations have been promulgated to that end, you have been assured that as soon as it is expedient after the war to remove them, they will be removed. But there are other measures of control that are not related to war. “There are modern trends that point to the fact that Government control in many cases wilt be more necessary than ever after the war.” Mr Sullivan said that if Government assistance for secondary industries was essential, and he believed it was, then as trustees of the public purse the Government must guard the public interest. That opened another aspect, the provision of better machinery for the operation of the Industrial Efficiency Act. “Proposals to that end are under consideration,” he said. “I am sure that you, as manufacturers, would not like to see control go completely by the board. Such a removal would soon see industry in parlous plight. A flood of cheap manufactured goods from countries with a low standard of wages and living, a frenzied and ruthless fighting for a limited market, a return one might almost say to jungle law, would soon follow the lifting of what are necessary restraints. “For the rehabilitation of our men now overseas, I believe planning is vitally necessary and I feel that in the future development of New Zealand, Government aid and reasonable control will be necessary.”