NO PROFITEERING

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 71, 21 September 1939, Page 12

NO PROFITEERING

ACTION IN AUSTRALIA

CONTROL SYSTEM SET UP

GAOL FdR OFFENDERS

(From "The Host's" Representative.)

SYDNEY, September 13

Popular acclaim has been given to the Federal Government's rigorous action to stop wartime profiteering. Proof that such action was necessary was given by unscrupulous individuals j and firms who, "because of the war," increased prices in the first few days, when obviously they were dealing in j stocks which they had acquired before | hostilities began. This obvious exploitation had brought a quick protest from the public, and the Government tackled the problem with commendable promptitude. Some increases, of course, will be inevitable as the result of wartime conditions. As the Prime Minister, Mr. Menzies, pointed out, prices of imported commodities will be affected by • higher shipping freights, increases in Customs and excise duties, and depreciated exchange,- and wartime changes in Australia's local economy will also increase certain costs. Consequently, price movements cannot be entirely restrained, but it is the determined aim of the new price-control authorities to ensure that commodities are maintained, at an equitable level and that no undue burdens in the cost of living are inflicted on the people. STATES MUST CO-OPERATE. Price control in Australia has constitutional difficulties not known in a country with only one Government, such as New Zealand. Here the administrative machinery is in the hands of the State Governments, whose cooperation the Commonwealth Government must secure to make its own policy and proclamation effective. The public must now. look to the State Governments to implement the Federal promise. There should be no difficulty in this, j Labour Governments in Queensland, j Tasmania, and Western Australia are j certain to give wholehearted support; indeed, Queensland has possessed for years price-fixing machinery which needs no further reinforcement. Vie-! toria's Country Party-Labour Govern-1 ment was first in the field . with an anti-profiteering declaration. All six State Premiers, in conference with Federal Ministers at Canberra at the weekend, agreed to give their utmost co-operation in administering the price-control scheme, so it is unlikely that any constitutional difficulties about "State rights" and other' matters will be raised. Federal proclamations have been issued enumerating groups of commodities which have been made immediately subject to price control and which will be added to from time to time. Prices of commodities listed must not exceed those of August 31. Professor D. B. Copland, regarded as Australia's outstanding economist, who' had much to do with the "Premiers' Plan" of the depression period, has been appointed to the new post of Controller of Prices. Deputy controllers will be appointed in each State, with advisory committees to assist them. Consumers, as well as other interests, will be represented on the committees. Rises in prices will be limited to those influences which will include increases in Customs and excise duty, oversea prices, and shipping freights, currency depreciation in respect of non-sterling countries and in respect of Australian manufactured goods, and increased costs compared with oversea manufacture. PENALTIES TO BE SEVERE. "No ■ mercy will be shown to business men who see in the war an, opportunity to enrich themselves at the expense of the public," said the Prime Minister, Mr. Menzies. "No penalty is too severe. Fines will not be sufficient, because a profiteer will regard .them as a normal risk of his nefarious operations. The Government, therefore, intends to make provision for imprisonment for substantial terms in addition to pecuniary penalties. The penalties will not stop there. The Government is determined, through confiscatory provisions aimed at the profiteers concerned, to recover from them the total profit made in excess of the prices fixed by the Controller of Prices." While the present State organisations for fixing prices of certain commodities will continue, the main burden will fall on the deputy price controllers and advisory committees in each State. No time will be lost in setting up this additional machinery and getting it to work. The State Governments realise that in preventing profiteering it is scotching an evil which, if allowed to raise its head, will tend to impair the national morale and economy.