COUNTRY PARTY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 35, 11 February 1935, Page 9

COUNTRY PARTY.

A JUNIOR MINISTER.

ATTACK ON PROTECTION. INDUSTRIES ALARMED. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, February 4. The . Prime Minister, Mr. Lyons, recently included among the members of his mission to London one of his assistant Ministers, Mr. Thorby. This step was admittedly taken to propitiate the Country party, for as previously mentioned, Mr. Thorby has drawn much attention to himself here by his vehement, not to say violent, advocacy of the claims of the primary producer. This is what the last weekly bulletin of the Australian Country party has to say about him: "The selection of Mr. Victor Thorby to accompany the mission is a move which must be hailed by city and country alike as an act of political wisdom. Mr. Thorby is a country man, a practical farmer, a forceful personality, an aggressive orator, a student of rural economics, and one whose practical experience of State as well as Commonwealth Ministerial administration, will add might and strength to the delegation." To leave no doubt in the minds of its readers about the high value which it attaches to Mr. Thorby and his services, the party organ proceeds: "Mr. Thorby'a colleagues will be the Prime Minister and the Minister in charge of Treaties." Think of it! This assistant; Minister brought into the delegation at the last moment to placate the C.P., is the veal centre and focus of interest, the true source of authority and wisdom in this embassy—and Mr. Lyons and Sir Henry Gull'ctt and the other Ministers are merely his "colleagues"! It would be difficult to suggest more impressively the tone of arrogant superiority'which the spokesmen of the Australian Country party constantly adopt when professing to speak for the man on the land " as distinct from any other type of industrialist.

" Creeping Paralysis." The bulletin proceeds to lay groan stress on the immense value of the industrial interests which Australia has already established, and the necessity for securing outlets for our products. But it mentions only primary products, and, by implication, it condemns any attempt to .protect any other form of industry. Australia, it seems, is calleU upon to defend its "huge stake in the world"—its primary products and their oversea markets —against "the threat which the' creeping paralysis of economic nationalism implies." On this remark, two comments seem necessary. To the Country party, it appears, the natural desire of the Australian woolfarmer -or wheatgrower or grazier to find markets for his products in the face of foreign competition is not "economic nationalism"—that invidious title being reserved by Mr. Thorby and his friends solely for "the efforts made by the secondary industries to protect themselves and their markets against oversea rivals. Secondly, the methods adopted by our manufacturing. Industries to defend themselves—covered by the term Protection—are baneful and , destructive; they havo the same effect as "creeping paralysis" on the economic organism. But when the same protectionist methods are employed by our primary producers to build up one of Ine most carefully defended economic 83'stenw in the world, their policy becomes at once justifiable and admirable, and any attempt to mitigate its rigours are denounced by Mr. Thorby as treason against Australia and its people. "Sacrifice Uneconomic Industries." There is nothing unusual about this attempt to glorify our primary industries at the expense of other forms of production, and to insist that what is a right and proper course for our primary producers is wholly reprehensible and wrong when the same sort of claim is put forward by our manufacturers and the workers who depend for existence upon our secondary industries. This very week Mr. Thorby, evidently exhilarated by the news of his appointment as a delegate to London, has taken an early opportunity to prove once more that he can vie with any other member of the Country party in his ardent and exclusive devotion to the rights and interests of "the man on the land." Two days ago he gave an address to the Constitutional Association in Sydney, and in the course of his speech he made some remarks which have aroused much resentment and caused grave anxiety here. Describing the chances of finding markets oversea for our primary products, he maintained that one of our chief difficulties in this respect is high cost of production, and this, he thinks, is chiefly due to' our protectionist policy, which "has bolstered up certain secondary industries" at the expense of the whole country. It is now Australia's obvious duty 'to consider how she can dispense with "artificial, uneconomic industries" while at the same time •'continuing to protect industries that are worth while." That there might be no possible doubt about his meaning, Mr. Thorby added later that "some of the artificially bolstered up industries which Australia is endeavouring to carry on will have to be sacrificed." Special Meeting Called. It is not surprising that chese threats and warnings, uttered by a member of a Ministry committed to a Protectionist policy—by a member of a delegation proceeding to London to adjust our commercial relations with Britain—should produce a certain amount of disquiet and apprehension. We are all painfully familiar with the mental dexterity which enables Mr. Morley and Dr. Earie Page and their friends to applaud Protection when applied to primary industries— which arc "economic" —and to condemn it when applied to manufactures—which are ''uneconomic" and "artificial.". Of r-ourse, Mr. Morley disclaims any intention of destroying all our secondary industries at once. But his speech was so alarmin<r that the covS-U of our Chamber of Manufactures proposes to discuss it at a special meeting and then to sub-» mit the results of its deliberations at once to Mr. Lyons.