AUSTRALIAN UNIONS

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 68, 17 September 1930, Page 11

AUSTRALIAN UNIONS

STATE WITHIN STATE

ACCORDING TO "DAILY MAIL"

LONDON, 16th September,

The "Daily Mail" says: "Public extravagance and the fall in world prices and tho wheat pool have brought Australia into the gravest economic difficulties!. If the Commonwealth Government were to repudiate tho interest on the public debt, there would be an immediate heavy fall in all Government stock. Moreover, Australia has to find thirty-five millions to pay interest on public loans. If this is not met, Australia will be a defaulter, and will join' tho disreputable array of States, mostly in Central America, whose credit has been destroyed by similar acts of insolvency.

"But the trades unions of Australia, which arc so powerful that they are almost a State within a State, have rejected tho scaling down of rates of pay unless it is accompanied by a reduction of interest by investors. The repudiation of Government liabilities is ' thus proposed deliberately within the" Empire.

"Perhaps the most practical measure of immediate aid would be the transfer to the Australian Government of the produce of income-tax collected on interest on Australian loans paid in this country. The British Government would thus free itself from tho reproach of making a profit out of Australia's membership in the Empire at a time when the Comomnwealth was in the midst of dangerous economic difficulties."