Higher Wages, Lower Costs: Australian Living Conditions And Our Own

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 74, 28 July 1948, Page 5

Higher Wages, Lower Costs: Australian Living Conditions And Our Own

In a brief chat with a member of the Australian Representative hockey team, Mr E. Johnson, yesterlay, the matter of comparative living costs came up and Mr Johnson felt that sope prices in New Zealand were too high. He said members of the team had looked at a number of articles of clothing in the shops and they considered therfi to be roughly 25 per cent higher priced than similar articles in Australia. One of the things the team noticed in particular was the cost of dry cleaning. Mr Johnson gave an example of the price of getting a pair of sports trousers done in Australia —2/6 —and until recently only 2/-. Out here the cost is generally around the 4/- mark. To clean a suit in Australia would cost about 5/-, yet here the price is it)/-. Basic wages in Australia were also higher in most trades, hq said, and very rarely was a man paid the minimum because labour was at such a premium that higher wages were the order of the day.