Keen to assemble local industry

The fourteenth annual conference of the New Zealand Coach and Motor Body Builders Industrial Association of Employers was held in Kroon’s Social Hall yesterday. A welcome to Dunedin was extended by the Deputy Mayor (Cr W. B. Tavener), and the president suitably replied. The report presented by the chairman, Mr H.W. Harvey, stated: "The Government is anxious to support local industry but naturally it is its duty to consider the economic side of every local industrial proposition. In our own case, the Government is faced with the arguments of car traders and owners who resent the payment of £153,944 per year to encourage an industry which employs only 1302 persons. The answer is that many allied trades benefit as well as those engaged in the importation of necessary materials and that secondary industries are necessary for the prosperity of this country. The policy stipulating for the importation of one chassis to every three completed cars, assembled or unassembled, will lead to the expansion of the industry, so that a number of hands will find employment. A demand will be created for a very much larger number of bodies and lower manufacturing costs will lead to a larger reduction in the price of the colonial built body."

Airship efficiently equipped

Captain Amundsen’s airship will be the most efficiently equipped craft ever used in the air. The transmitting apparatus will enable the commander to communicate with land and with ships up to 1000 miles. A special direction-finding device has been installed to assist navigation. It is sufficiently sensitive to enable the navigators accurately to determine their course, even when over the Pole when ordinary compasses are valueless.

Japanese co-operation backed

The opinion that Japan, Australia and New Zealand should unite and co-operate by all means to help to maintain the peace of the Pacific is held by Mr Iyemasa Tokugawa, Consul General for Japan in Australia and New Zealand. Mr Tokugawa, who has his headquarters in Sydney, is on his first visit to New Zealand.

Mr Tokugawa said that since the war the Pacific had loomed large as a centre of world power and he believed the tendency would be for it to grow more and more so. This was all the more reason why it was necessary for nations bordering the Pacific to unite. He thought that America and perhaps Canada could also co-operate.

"Japan and things Japanese are not known in this part of the world as they should be," he said, "and conversely this part of the world is not known enough in Japan. The first thing to be done then is for these countries to gain a greater knowledge of one another. One means is in an interchange of visits."

Speaking of New Zealand, Mr Tokugawa said he was much impressed with the splendid and progressive way things were being done here. Japan was a new country as far a modern civilisation was concerned, and likewise Australia and New Zealand. — by ODT Wellington correspondent

Petrol pumps have place

The question whether the kerbside petrol pump is or is not a desirable acquisition to our streets lends itself to reflective consideration The position really appears to be simple enough. The control of the street is in the hands of the local authorities. It is for them to decide whether the kerbside petrol pump is to be sanctioned or whether its installation is to be regarded as undesirable. Clearly, it is not desirable that these pumps should be installed at any places where they are likely to prove a nuisance. But in streets off the main lines of traffic or of ample width — and that is the general position in Dunedin at all events — there should be no objection to the existence of the ministering kerbside installation. — editorial — ODT, 11.3.1926