WAR FINANCE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 107, 2 November 1942, Page 3

WAR FINANCE

EQUALITY OF SACRIFICE

Sir Claude Reading, chairman 61 the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, signs the annual report of the bank for 1042. It is remarked in the report that the "internal policy in Australia has been dominated since the outbreak of war by the growing necessity to transform the economy quickly to a full war footing. In the past year this change, has progressed with greater momentum, and has become more and more a matter, not of absorbing the unemployed, but of transferring labour from less essential industries to the, defence forces and to war production. [The financial counterpart of this task b'of diverting effort to war is to ensure that the higher national income is not spent in a way that will increase the difficulty of the task, that the costs of financing the war are not raised unduly, and that the monetary sacrifices necessarily involved are spread over the whole community as equitably as possible."

Dealing with controls at present exercised, tlie report states that those already introduced are insufficient in themselves at a time when incomes are high through Government war expenditure. The quantity of goods available for civilian use must decline as the proportion of Australia's war effort directed to war purposes grows, If this decline did not, occur, it could mean only that Australia was failing in its task of mobilising the Commonwealth for war. At a time when money incomes are high, but the quantity of goods on which these incomes can /be spent is falling, it is essential that people shall refrain from spending part of their incomes.

It is therefore the urgent and vital duty of every member of the community to exercise the greatest economy in all expenditure, to save and lend to the Government every penny whicli can be spared from the purchase of the essentials of life, and to use the utmost care to avoid waste of any kind.