AUSTRALIAN LABOUR

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 68, 17 September 1936, Page 16

AUSTRALIAN LABOUR

>PIN AIMS DEFINED

NANKING AND INVESTMENT

In a comprehensive oytline of the objects of Labour's banking and monetary policy as adopted at the Fed- j eral Labour Conference' in Adelaide, the Federal Labour leader, Mr. J. Curtin, said that the Commonwealth Bank was the logical instrument to function for the community with regard to monetary readjustment and economic reconstruction, says the Melbourne "Age" A Labour Government would legislate so that the bank would be able to completely control credit for the nation, money for industry, direction of general investment and currency relations with external markets. Capitalism had now restricted production in many directions to perpetuate itself and was bringing uncertainty and misery to increasing numbers of the population. The. system was. not working for the benefit of the people and its difficulties >yere those which immediately confronted us. The Labour Party would concentrate on the problems which Capitalism could not solve; (a) unemployment; (b) lack of markets; and (c) the danger of.war. The fundamental cure for unemployment, Mr. Curtin said, was the planning of production and distribution which would eliminate the booms, slumps, and disorders of Capitalism. He epitomised the present position of the Australian economic structure as follows:—!. Many farms, workshops, and machines existed which were capable of producing goods far. beyond probable and, in.some cases, possible needs. Full enjoyment of these resources was, therefore, prevented by the lack of markets. . . , 2. Men and women existed in numbers greater than were necessary to produce the goods required by the existing system. Consequently there were large numbers idle, as well as large numbers on socially unnecessary work. 3. Control of much production was monopolised for particular, and not general, interest, and even contrary to general interests. CAUSES OF UNEMPLOYMENT. 4. World circulation of goods was .complicated by varying labour conditions and national barriers. Capitalist unemployment, in the main, was due to six sets of reasons, (a) Labour-sav-ing, devices, mechanical and organisational, by which a proportion of the population was enabled to supply the needs of the whole population. The fact that instead of the labour of all being reduced, a proportion of the population worked as long as before, while the rest worked little or no time at all; (b) violent fluctuations in trade, due to the anarchy of competitive production, with its booms and slumps; (c) changes in production, as petrol and electricity taking place of steam power produced from coal; .(d) the tendency for manufacture to gravitate to the sources of raw material, power, and cheap labour; (c) determination of all agricultural countries to develop industry so as to make them independent of industrial countries in the event of war (for example, cutting them off from the source of ?. Mr Cur/tin said that the treatment of the unemployed would be dealt with according to two prinftiples: (1) The distribution of existing work; and (2) creation of new work, as follows:—A shortened working day. G#ving workers extended holidays, with pay, possible through national insurance, as it would disorganise some industries, if the cost were made a direct charge. Raising the school age, or, . alternatively, i»stituting a system of continued education associated with employment. Reducing, the pensionable age and increasing pensions. 5. The creation of new work by improving the social amenities and housing conditions of the people. Improving working conditions of the people. Extension of the public health organisation, public utilities, and the use of capital and labour in the production of national assets. CONTROLLING CAPITALISM. Finance was the nerve system of the capitalist system, Mr. Curtin said. To deal with unemployment- as- a ■problem in itself, and also to make that industrial and economic preparedness wfaioh was the essence of national defence and security, three related-• monetary measures were necessary. _ One was national control of credit, in order to ■ensure its adequacy to maintain and increase employment; another was national control of interest rates, in order to keep to a minimum the monetary and capital costs of production and industry; and the third was national direction of investment, with the object of assisting in the promotion of a balanced economic development. Mr. Curtin said that the task of Labour was to set free and direct the great powers of production and distribution in general, which capitalism now held in shackles, and which caused vast suffering and want in an era in which Australia possessed machinery, workshops, transport, arid a'distribu-, tors' organisation capable of producing and handling almost unlimited quantities of goods; men and women of un surpassed skill and knowledge in everything pertaining to human needs; a mechanism of money and credit • capable of directing and changing the directions of human activity by checking or extending the flow of capital; an organisation for the conduct of foreign trade by which Australia exported many of her products, and re- j ceived in exchange the produce of other nations.

The regulation or control of capital, Mr. Curtin said, meant.the regulation and control of capitalism. At present the substantial control of capitalism was in tha hands of the controllers of finance. Every, farm and every factory was now subject to their domination. Private initiative and enterprise was handicapped by - limitations imposed by the operators of credit and money. So that the economic order might henceforth be directed increasingly to the service of all the people; unemployment dealt with nationally; markets found for the output of industry and the menace of war averted, or capacity for defence increased, sovereignty over the source of currency and credit must be held by the community as a whole.

The Commonwealth Bank was the logical instrument to function for the community in this fundamental feature of monetary readjustment and economic reconstruction, Mr. Curtin continued. A Labour Government would legislate so that the Commonwealth Bank would be able to completely control (a) credit for the nation, (b) money for industry, (c) direction of general investment, arid (d) currency relations with external markets. Such a monetary policy, linked to a programme of industrial and economic expansion, improved conditions of working and living;'1 "and, associated with a progressive scale of social services, represented the essential require-ments-of reform. Reform was the alternative to chaos on ; the one hand .and a reactionary declension on the ■other. .- -r- ■■',■;■:■ "V-.-:,,.■