THOUGHTS FOR THE TIMES.

Hokitika Guardian, 11 December 1929, Page 4

THOUGHTS FOR THE TIMES.

PRIVATE GAIN, PUBLIC LOSS , The new Labour Government of Australia has taken the extreme step of placing an embargo on the exportation of stud sheep. This form of trading has assumed large dimensions in Australia of late. The. Minister of Customs recently announced at Can- ! berra that nearly 23,000 stud sheep had been exported from Australia since 1919, and they had been sold for, roughly, £390,000. The chief buyers have been South Africa and Russia, and it is evidently the intention of the Governments in these countries to grow wool on a large scale. This means dangerous competition in the future to be faced by the Australian wool-growers, who are already finding it difficult to hold their own in a market constantly invaded by cheap substitutes. The prospects of the wool industry are just now anything but encouraging, and the circumstances are \ such that the action of the Federal Government seems thoroughly justifiable. It has been said that no Government should ■ allow an industry worth £70,000,000' a year to the country to be destroyed ' merely to give large profits to a handful of breeders and stock-dealers, and that sentence seems to me to cover the whole ground.