FINANCIAL POLICY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 August 1943, Page 3

FINANCIAL POLICY

OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOUR PARTY IN WAR AND PEACE CONDITIONS MR CURTIN’S VIEWS ON USE OF BANK CREDIT. CRITICISED AS DANGEROUSLY INFLATIONARY. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, August 10. , Radical changes from Australia’s pre-war finance system to deal with the post-war reconstruction will be made if the Labour Party is returned to power. This has been disclosed in a special statement on the party’s finance policy which was made by the Prime Minister, Mr Curtin. Use will be made of bank credit on a large scale, as it has been used to finance the war. In the last two years £259,000,000 has been drawn by the Government from the Commonwealth Bank for this purpose. “My Government has proved that in war time every demand for money, no matter how great, can be met,” declared Mr Curtin.' “In time of war money is no bar to meeting the demand of work for all who can work. My Government gives its pledge that when peace returns all the money we require Will be similarly found to provide work for all who want it.”

Mr Curtin hinted that the carrying out of this policy inevitably would mean continued regimentation of finance and price-fixing after the wai. Commenting on the Prime Ministers statement, Sir Claude Reading, chairman of the Commonwealth Bank Board, said that the improper use of bank credit in peace time could destroy the purchasing power of currency and wreck the standard of living. Expressing his personal view, Sir Claude said he believed that a strict limit must be imposed upon the use of bank credit in the post-war period for any purpose. “Work for all who can work was a laudable objective, and bank credit in certain circumstances could help to achieve this end but, if used without full justification, could defeat it and do incalculable harm, he said. Instead of work for all there could easily be work for none. “We are now involved in a race between victory and inflation,” comments the Sydney “Daily Telegraph” in an editorial. “The pound is worth only 15s of its pre-war value, because the war time book-financed, inflatory credit, has given higher wages and lef| the public with fewer goods to spend their money on. “One of the first jobs of the post-war reconstruction will be to recover the value of the money earned, and he will not do that by continuing the process which has destroyed it. Mr Curtin’s post-war financial plans must lead „ either to complete financier collapse or to a system of increasingly severe controls on the private freedom to spend, heavier taxation, and a vas,t bureaucracy.” .