INVESTMENT CONTROL

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29130, 16 February 1960, Page 15

INVESTMENT CONTROL

Labour Policy In Australia

SYDNEY, February 15.

A Labour Federal Government in Australia would seek to control or guide investment, Mr E. G. Whitlam, a Labour member of Parliament, said today. Mr Whitlam, who is one •of four candidates for deputy leadership of the Federal Parliamentary Labour Party, was speaking in a television interview.

A Federal Labour Government, in guiding investment, would examine to what extent it would provide employment or assist local industry, he said. The control would be direct. It would be responsible to Parliament. “You would have to alter the Constitution for this, but it would at least relieve some of the brutality of taxation ind import controls, which are the only things governments can now use to control inflation, or the economy, or interest rates or the banks,” he said. Mr Whitlam said the Labour Party would try to nationalise those activities which led to exploitation or anti-social activities. Nationalisation could be achieved only by passing an act and getting the people to approve it at a referendum. In other cases, public competition could be set up in fields where private monopoly existed at present.