RISING STEEL PRICES

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 9, 12 January 1938, Page 8

RISING STEEL PRICES

, The rapid development of the Australian iron and steel industry has been accompanied with a claim that production costs are the lowest in the world. Nevertheless, a rise in prices of Australian steel has been announced, and it has raised considerable controversy, because of the effects on other industries using steel and iron, and on the Australian Government's re-armament costs. The building industry is heavily concerned and the secretary of the Carpenters' Union recently declared ithe rise in the price of steel unwarranted.

He could not see why a few privileged people controlling the Broken Hill Proprietary Company, Ltd., and Australian Iron and Steel, Ltd., should be allowed to imperil .an industry employing about 33,000 men. Last year the Broken Hill Proprietary Company, Ltd., made a profit of more than a million pounds. The steel industry had fallen into the hands of a powerful combine, which was arbitrarily fixing prices to suit its shareholders.

When the Minister of Defence, Mr. Thorby, was questioned by the Press, he said that the Commonwealth Government's policy was to give first consideration to Australian industries; but the Government had two brakes on any unfair prices: (1) it had substantial stocks of steel on order at the old prices; (2) it controlled tariffs and bounties, and if necessity arose could obtain supplies from oversea. But the Customs Department, after applying the acid test of comparing competitive prices, is reported to have found that "in the case of most of the forms of iron and steel affected by the price increases, Australian selling prices are below those at which similar materials could be landed in Australia on a duty-free basis." If so, the new prices are not tariff-propped prices; and are, in fact, less affected by tariff than the prices of many other local commodities now sold in the highly-protected Australian

market.