AUSTRALIA TODAY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 918, 11 March 1930, Page 9

AUSTRALIA TODAY

COUNTRY FACING BIG LOSSES MR. A. SPENCER’S VIEWS The serious adverse trade balance in Australia was commented on by Mr. Albert Spencer, president of the Auckland Employers’ Association, who returned from Australia by the Marama this morning. Australia's secondary exports were practically eliminated, he said, because of the high cost of production and many of the primary exports were sold on an already overloaded market. This had caused a serious adverse trade balance. During the last few years huge loan expenditure had been incurred and this was frequently unproductive, causing false prosperity. This extravagant loan expenditure had inflated local prices and forced an uneconomic cost of wages to be artificially maintained. Unfortunately the Commonwealth Government had failed to face the readjustment, continued Mr Spencer. Arbitration Courts were continually raising the cost of labour and employers and employees were content to accept higher tariffs and bounties, taking the line of least resistance. “So long as Australia retains her present form of compulsory arbitration the responsibility will be enormous.”

he continued. “The recent utterances of the Federal Arbitration Judges show that they are alive to the dangers of the present position and are desirous of giving justice to all. “Many large industrial firms in "New South Wales and Victoria are working under 26 different awards and the State and Federal awards overlap each other. “Employers generally are facing lessened profits and increasing taxation; others again are facing losses. As a rule employers are naturally reluctant to make any reduction in wages, but they ask in return that wages should be based on output. Labour on the other hand will not accept one penny reduction in wages, and not a minute off the working day, but goes on demanding more wages.”

Mr. Spencer expressed the opinion that bounties on primary industries were economically unsound. He instanced the fact that the proposed bounty on wheat would eost thq country anything up to £8,000,000. This unsatisfactory industrial chaos must be changed, he said. Last week in the Arbitration Court. Judge JDetridge expressed the opinion that it was not the employer but the community which paid for higher wages and reduced hours of work.

“I feel sure that the present economic position in Australia will force the Court to take drastic steps to decrease production costs, which -would soon have the desired effect of reducing the cost of living. No doubt compulsory arbitration will have to be abolished in Australia and a reasonable basic wage paid on production. Australia will have to borrow less, reduce production costs, reduce Taxation, which is Tar too high, practise rigid public and private economy, and get down to hard work.”