GOVERNMENT TN BUSINESS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 202, 9 August 1928, Page 8

GOVERNMENT TN BUSINESS.

(To The Editor.) Sir, —The admission of the Queensland Labour Government that its attempt to nationalise the industries of the State has proved a failure is of world-wide importance and interest. Mr McCormack, the Premier of the State, who made this confession on behalf of his colleagues and himself at the May Convention of the Labour Party in Brisbane, is entitled to much credit for his candour. He still maintained that there would be nothing wrong with the trading plank in the party’s platform, if the workers were ready to give adequate social service to the community; but he admitted that this social service had not been forthcoming. The Government, he told the Convention, had been absolutely compelled to close down the State’s business enterprises because it could not get the service necessary to render them sufficiently profitable to justify their continuance. He quoted specific instances in which State enterprises launched mainly for the welfare of the workers had been wrecked by inefficient service. These experiences, he explained, were among the reasons that had turned him from nationalisation towards ownership by the people in the industry. New Zealand has not yet gone the lengths Queensland did in this respect, but it has been coquetting for many years, long before the advent of the present Government, with various business undertakings which over and over again have been shown to be incompatible with the legitimate functions of the State.