LABOUR UNREST

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 122, 19 November 1929, Page 10

LABOUR UNREST

EFFECTS IN AUSTRALIA LOANS FALLING DUB (By Telegraph.) (Special to "The Evening. Post.") I -.~ AUCKLAND, This Day. It is most regrettable that under the conditions which prevail in Australia there should be such an undue degree of labour unrest," said Mr. A. I. Johns, general manager of the New Zealand Insurance Company,' who returned to Auckland from Sydney by the Aorangi yesterday. He believed that the Australian worker was as well off as the worker in any other country in regard to the scale and purchasing power of his wages. As indicating the evil of the unrest, Mr. Johns mentioned that the New South Wales Government had spent £250,000 for relief among 12,000 coal miners who had been idle in the Newcastle area for some months past. As a gratuitous act the Government had been granting these miners a dole averaging £2 a week a head. It seemed a wicked thing that so much money should be spent to keep men in idleness while work was available. The decrease in the national income of Australia for this year, owing to the fall in wool prices and the smaller grain crops, due to the lack> of rain, had been estimated at £30,000,000, but since then the value of wool haft appreciated to some extent, and this figure might prove to bo on the high side. The immediate" outlook for Australia was not very bright because . of this, and also because loans amounting to £130,000,000 which were falling due this year, would have to be renewed on a hardening market, entailing a considerable increase in interest charges. The tendency for interest rates to rise was noted by Mr. Johns. For mortgages involving small amounts 7 per cent, was being asked, whereas the rate in New Zealand had been 6J per cent., and was tending to fall. Conditions in New Zealand did not indicate a hardening of the interest rate, but there might be some such effect in sympathy with the trend of the Australian money market.