THE AUSTRALIAN PLIGHT

Hokitika Guardian, 8 May 1931, Page 2

THE AUSTRALIAN PLIGHT

THE TASK OF CLEANING UP. (Received by Sydney Bulletin). Wo have yet to faro the facts which Soußin has shirked at Canberra, and Lang most conspicuously in Sydney. And for a few weeks it is going to hurt, We cannot ponio down to earth withmit a bump, Mo s t of our standards will Lave to be revised. Price levels have fallen and wages and salaries will have to conform to them. We shall be none the worse off for that; the sta"dai , d of living will not he affected at all. Yet if the decline is not sharp enough, it may bo necessary to push the fall in salaries and wages a few points in advance of the fall in prices, i» order to hasten the latter. There, will have to be wholesale reductions of both personnel and pay in the Public Service. The reductions of pay may be gradual; and ample notice should be given of impending dismissals. Departments will have t<> be amalgamated; Ministers reduced by nearly one half. Now nil tin’s might loolc like n”'lin'T things up by the roots and inevitably producing widespread disorder am! distress. It is not going to bo any picnic; but the ill results will In' almost immediately offset 1 - a return of confidence. The day Australia (including N.S. Wales) decides beyond all question to live within its means and proceeds on the painful but im- 1 porntiv© process of reorganisation, wo | shall see credit begin to flow back : j and that will quickly counterbalance all the ill-offocts of retrenchment. When that time comes no effort must be spared to turn the trickle of confidents and credit into n hourly flood.

Australia was not a bad place in the first dozen yours of this century, in spite of a more than average share of drought. Between 1001 and the. end of 1022 unemployed trades union, ists never reached 7 per cent., and fell as low a.s 4 per cent, Even in our latter gorgeous days of boom, we never got down to a figure like that; in 1928 an average of just under T 1 per cent, of trades unionists were unemployed, and in 1929 just over 11 per cent. And, us has been shown elsewhere, the wages in proportion to purchasing power were within 3 per cent, of our highest recent figures. When we get hack tt'-n. to approximately pre-war conditions, we get hack something that not cause us any apprehension, A condition under which only 4 per cent, wore unemployed must indeed seem rather like

Paradise to a generation which sees over 20 per cent, of its trade-union members unable to find a job.

True, we shall never be able to exactly reproduce pre-war conditio”s. Quite apart from t’-o millions spent on war, and tlie millions still to be put on war pensions, State public debts grew from 317 millions as at June 30th, 1914, to 726 millions as at June 30th, 1929; in these 15 years the States wont into debt l’or more than they had borrowed in all their lives previously. The interest is a heavy burden round our necks- On the other hand we have developed our secondary industries and made great improvement in bur primary industries; ami this depression has looped off tens of millions of boom values and reduced overhead expenses by other millions,

It is n cold siren m wo have lo plunge into. But it <i-.ee not look wide, •"id there is "-md grazing on the other side. We have been living on our fat until few of us have much fat loft; our confidence in ourselves and in one another has withered. The best we can do is te b'uw bubbles and call old failures and futilities by new names. There is no hope in such absurdities. Better to «o forward and dare them to stand still and die.