LIVING COSTS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 33, 9 February 1939, Page 8

LIVING COSTS

.NEW ZEALAND BETTER OFF MINISTER'S ASSERTION AUSTRALIAN FIGURES [ Pet Press Association.] WELLINGTON. Feb. 8. A comparison of price indices in New Zealand and Australia was made by the Minister of Industries and Commerce, Hon. D.’G. Sullivan, in a statement when commenting on reports that retail prices were continuing to rise and puces of certain commodities were likely to be advanced. Such statement, tne Minister saiu, were made by people who apparently took no effort to base their remark* on actual facts. The December issue of the Abstract of Statistics showed a drop of 10 cent, in the grocery group index number from November, 193/, to November, 1938. In the same period the index for food and groceries in Australia rose from 831 to 882. compared with the New Zealand figure for all foods which fell from 1002 to 98a. Taking the latest available Australian wage statistics the rise to Australian workers between 1935 and June, 1938, was only 10.2 per cent . compared with New Zealand s 25.2 per cent. On the basis of “real wages and comparing the increases in all groups of retail price indices, the average Australians real income advanced in that period by 3.6 per cent, and New Zealanders by 10.5 per cent. Mr. Sullivan said the figures proved conclusively that prices had now reached a degree of comparative stability and had by no means overtaken the wage