Evening Post. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1931. THE POSITION IN AUSTRALIA

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 34, 10 February 1931, Page 8

Evening Post. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1931. THE POSITION IN AUSTRALIA

The gleam of light by which the emphatic declaration of the Parkes electors in favour of honesty, solvency, and facing the facts relieved the gloom of Australian politics, has not lasted long. It seems to have passed like a flash and left the darkness ' looking blacker than ever. Under these conditions it was a pathetic circumstance that last week the people of Australia had sympathy to spare for the victims,of New Zealand's earthquake, and that this disaster to some extent obscured their own troubles. But it was inevitable that whatever relief this distraction may have afforded should have been of short duration. As a message from Sydney which we published on Saturday said:— 7 Although Australians have been diverted temporarily from their troubles by the deplorable happenings this week" in tho Dominion, they are again beginning to wonder when the heavy pall of depression which hangs over the Commonwealth will show signs of lifting. Every Government of every State lis looking to the Commonwealth Government for a lead. Every citizen of every State awaits anxiously some tangible pronouncements which will afford work for bread-winners, and relief from the intolerable economic depression which threatens to develop >into something more sinister. ■ What kind of a lead the head of the Commonwealth Government had to offer was disclosed in the same message. Mr. Scullin's address to the Conference of State Premiers and Treasurers was a jeremiad of the most'depressing character, a : display of pessimism in which the deplorable condition of the country wasjanade the excuse for the violation of the Government's promise to carry out the remedy prescribed by the Melbourne Conference six months.ago, and the probability that these conditions will'become worse during the coming year was not made the basis of a call for repentance, for economy, for self-Sacrifice, and for united and drastic action, but merely for empty platitudes and further procrastination. '~ ■"" It was only on the' negative side that Mr. Scullin appears to have shown any:strenglh at all, and then it was in the wrong direction. At the outset there was, according to the Sydney message already quoted, "a hitch, both Mr. J. H. Scullin and Mr. J. T. Lang declaring; that they will not consider any plan involving a reduction in wages or the standard of living." The irresolute Mr. Scullin and the truculent Mr. Dang have at any rate this one strong point in common, but it does not appear that even Mr. Lang has yet discovered how to reverse the 10 per cent, cut in wages with which the Federal Arbitration Court has lately come to the relief of industry and of unemployment. It is open to Mr. Lang to boast that New South Wales has still the highest basic wage of all the Slates, but in accordance with a law which so many of the Labour leaders refuse to recognise, the figures do not here represent the realities. The effect of the 10 per cent, cut and of the reduction of the basic wage in accordance with the fall in the cost of living was to make that wage £3 16s 6d' in Sydney, £3 10s 3d in Melbourne, and r £3'os 9d in Brisbane. But what looks like a privilege is really, as the "Bulletin" of the 28th ultimo shows, a handicap:— If the workers of Sydney were any better off for this, handicap upon the industry of New South Wales —if work done by them cost more because their standard of living was higher—"The Bulletin" could find little to com plain about. But actually they are not tha gainers at all, because the cost of living is 27 per cent, more in Sydney than in Brisbane. So, though tho basic wagein Sydney is' £3 16s 6d per week, the worker of Brisbane, where the basic wage is only £3 Os 9d, is slightly tho better off of the two. And that apart altogether from the fact that, on account of the higher cost of production in Sydney, work naturally passes that ca.pital by, and thus adds to its unemployment. ' . i ■ ■ A better illustration of the fallacy of applying a money/test to the assessment of wages without first testing the value of the money, could not be desired. A far more surprising performance on1 the part of Mr. Scullin was his repudiation of the authority of an expert committee which his own Government had set up. Shortly after tho conference got down. to business, we are told, the Prime Minister astonished tho delegations, by declaring that in its report tho committee of financial experts which drew up a plan for submission to tho conferences had no right to make recommendations, but was merely required to collect data and statistics for the information of those-present. It is almost-incredible that, after appointing a committee of experts to review the finances of the Commonwealth, Mr: Scullin should say that their only authority was to collect facts and figures without explaining their meaning or drawing any prac-, tical conclusion.- The terms of the order of reference are not stated, but it may be taken for certain that no financial experts would have wasted their time on such almost menial service, or could have overlooked the limitation now alleged by Mr. Scullin if it really had ex-

isted. On the other hand, he has obvious reasons for repudiating a sound, statesmanlike, and .far-reach-ing plan which would require courage and self-denial to execute, and repudiation by evasion is in accordance with his normal tactics. Mr. Scullin's three-years plan which excited such pathetic hopes in London two or three weeks ago has never come down from the clouds, and even Mr. Lang now regards it as not only nebulous but mythical. At the opening of the Conference, for which "not even an agenda paper" was provided, and to which no three-years plan or any other was submitted, he said:— So far I have not heard a word about the plan, and I have come to tho conclusion that the Government has no plan. The three-years plan which the Conference had assembled to discuss could not be produced, and the threeyears plan which the experts had prepared was ruled out, apparently without discussion as unauthorised— not a very businesslike or inspiring procedure! There was certainly" no lack of substance in the experts' plan for the restoration of Australia's credit and prosperity in three years. The basis of it is a reduction of £15,----000,000 a year in the Government expenditure, which, at the present rate will, according to Mr. Scullin himself,. leave a deficit of £10,----000,000 this year, and probably . a larger one in the year following. The alternative, they say, is to default in the Government's payments, the evils of which would be immeasurably greater than the hardship which the nation would be asked to face. The curtailment of road -expenditure,, which Mr. Lang is particularly anxious to increase, is declared to be imperative: Employment must be made profitable, and all obstacles to reduced costs must be removed. But one of these obstacles—the maintenance of artificially high wages— Mr. Scullin and Mr. Lang are, as we have seen, irrevocably determined to preserve. What is pephaps the most audacious of the Committee's findings brings them into direct v conflict with an even higher authority. They Strongly condemn the danger of inflation, declaring that it is "not the road to recovery but to collapse." And so this very unpleasant report is passed out, and Mr. Theodore is called upon to expound his much more comfortable doctrine. By the simple process of juggling with the currency, Mr. Theodore explained to the Conference how he could increase the national income by £100,000,000, find work for between 100,000 and 200,000 persons, increase the material wealth of the country—annually, we presume—by £30,000,000, and reduce the rales of interest. All this . the Labour Parry's financial magician is prepared to carry out by a wave of his wand, and yet there would be no repudiation of obligations, but there would be equality of sacrifice. Evidently before receiving these details, the financial editor of the "Morning Post" remarked: It would be unwise to jump at conclusions from the cabled summary, but it almost seems as if Mr. Scullin had joined tho Labour extremists in scouting the- bankers' advice. There is no "almost" or "seems" about it now. Twenty-four hours later the "Financial News" declared that ' . all those with Australian interests must be filled with dismay at the news from Canberra. . ■ i And before they have had time to recover from this shock Mr. Lajig comes forward with a scheme which even Mr. Scullin and Mr. Theodore repudiate, and which Mr. Bavin describes as "shameless, barefaced stealing." It is to be feared that Australia must sink lower yet before she begins to rise.