GOVERNMENT IN BUSI NESS

Hokitika Guardian, 10 August 1928, Page 1

GOVERNMENT IN BUSI NESS

LABOUR REPENTS. EXAMPLE FOR. NEW ZEALAND. (Nineteen Twenty-Eight Committee.) The admission of the Queensland Lahour 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. lie 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. Ho 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. SOME INSTANCES.

Take, for .instance, the case of. the

electrical supply traders. When the Electric Power Board Acts was placed upon the Statute Book in 191 S it certainly never whs intended that these

traders were to he driven out of business by subsidised State trading. It was assumed that the supply authorities, save in exceptional circumstances, would confine their operations to distributing current; hut no sooner were they firmly established than many of them began competing with the private traders in practically every branch of their activities. Supplied with cheap capital, freed from taxation, exempt from local rates, and with the goodwill of a benignant Government behind them, they started out with enormous advantages over their rivals. Yet the Public Works Statement of last year recorded that eleven of those boards had made losses on their trading operations and implied that others had failed to produce balance-sheets giving any intelligible idea of tboir transactions. Then there is the case of the privately-owned gas companies in competition with municipal and State con cerns of the same character. The Wellington Gas Company during the last -Six years has paid on an average £17,000 a year in land and income taxes, local rates, annual licenses and oter charges, while the Auckland Gas Company during the same period has paid an average of £33,793 a year. Both these companies are in active competition with municipal concerns that are exempt from these heavy charges,, and .the fact that they hold their own under such conditions suggests that tlie State and municipal enterprises in New Zealand sadly icquire the same close investigation as Mr McCormack lias applied to those in Queensland.: THE PLAIN PATH.

Cases of Government and Municipal intrusion upon private business in this country could be quoted in dozens. The experiences of the electrical traders and the gas companies are only examples of unfair interference bv the State with enterprises that are constantly under the observation of the public without more than a mere fiaction of the public realising the difficulties with which they are contending. The sawmillers and nurserymen, thanks largely to their iteration and reiteration of protests against unfair competition from the State, appear to have made some progress towards obtaining a measure of justice; hut their relief as vet is only on the horizon, so to speak, and they still have some distance to go before reaching the goal of their aspirations. They are fortunate, however, compared with those engaged in many other industries. The remaining list of grievances to he removed is so formidable indeed, that the Government may be excused some hesitancy in approaching its task. But the public, which is every bit as much concerned in this matter as are the individuals immediately affected by unfair State trading, has a right to expect that the Prime Minister and the Minister of Industries and Commerce will he as prompt and courageous in dealing with the problem as the Labolii" Premier of Queensland was in dealing with a similar problem in his

own country, Wellington, August 7th, ID2S.