WAR CHANGES

Dominion, Volume 38, Issue 3, 28 September 1944, Page 4

WAR CHANGES

Australia’s Secondary Industries DECENTRALIZATION POLICY The High Commissioner for Australia, Mr. D’Alton, in a talk at the Trades Hall, Wellington, emphasized the great change-over which war had brought to Australia’s economy. Australia could no longer be regarded simply as a primary producing country, he said. Before the war there were 500,000 farm workers but in 1943 this number had fallen to 360,000. The number of factory workers on the other hand had risen from 560,000 to 733,000. Australia’s industrial expansion dated from the previous war but, in the last few years, a vast manufacturing programme, mostly for war production, had been carried out. It had been the Government’s policy in regard to .this industrial expansion to decentralize industry by the establishment of plants in many country centres throughout Australia. Government munition factories had been widely scattered and manufacturing firms had been encouraged to. plan new buildings far outside the city limits. The ■ State Governments had co-operated, by making available rail freight concessions and local bodies had helped in the planning of new industries. Under this policy of decentralization 46 clothing factories had been set up in country centres and more were in course of establishment. Large-scale woollen mills were now operating in centres such as Orange, Goulburn, Albury, Lithgow and Bulli in New South Wales, Castlemaine, Stawell, Warrnambool, Ballarat, Sale, Daylesford, Wangaratta in Victoria, Mt. Gambier and Lobethal in South Australia, Albany in Western Aus- . trail a and Ipswich in Queensland. Other industries besides munitions and textiles had also been decentralized. Big shoe manufacturing factories 'had been set up in provincial centres and the manufacture of rayon and other goods was planned at Rutherford, near Newcastle.

This decentralization was not merely a war-time expedient. The country factories had come to stay. They incorporated, in most instances, the most modern thoughts in production methods and equipment, and were situated in the most healthy surroundings. There was no indication that any of them contemplated other than an expansion as labour and building facilities became available.

Many new war-time industries would continue in peace, and one of the greatest problems facing Australia was the change-over. The Australian Government looked to private enterprise either with its own resources or with the assistance of the Government to establish new industries, but if private enterprise could not or would not undertake this development, the Government would have to consider what it could do. As Mr. Curtin had pointed out, the Government factories alone had cost the people of Australia more than £75,060, they contained some of the finest equipment in the world, and were staffed by some of the most intelligent, adaptable and highly skilled workmen in the world, and those things must not ibe wasted.