"STATE-OWNED" ENTERPRISES IN AUSTRALIA.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 73, 27 March 1914, Page 8

"STATE-OWNED" ENTERPRISES IN AUSTRALIA.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, 21st March. Steadily but surely the area of industrial'concerns owned and worked by the Government is being enlarged in New South Wales. There are already State brickworks and quarries, which have ousted private enterprise from, a very considerable portion of Government work, and may at any moment compete with private enterprise in the open market. Also There are extensive carpentry and joinery works, which are pushing private" work out of all Government jobs. Arrangements have been made for the starting of a State-owned bakery to supply bread to all the Government institutions in the metropolitan area. If some Trades Hall enthusiasts could have got their way we would now have State butcheries and grocery etorea. The State is already in the field a-s a landlord, letting for rent cottages built by the Government for the purpose. Largely as a matter of political strategy the Labour Government is now • coming forward with promisee of extension of Government industrial enterprise in directions that will lead to the "anti-Social-istic" man on the land being numbered with those who participated in and support "Socialistic" schemes and works. Thus Ministers are telling farmers that it is intended to establish State flourmills in places where private enterprise is slow, and that it is very likely that the Government will soon open business as a manufacturer of agricultural implements, to be sold to farmers at bed-rock prices. -How Labour Ministers must feel tickled when they hear the hearty applause with which such announcements are received by "anti-Socialistic" agriculturists.