The Times SATURDAY, JULY 9, 1938. Private Enterprise Attacked

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 160, 9 July 1938, Page 4

The Times SATURDAY, JULY 9, 1938. Private Enterprise Attacked

A noteworthy feature of the recent debates in Parliament is the open attack upon private enterprise launched by several Government speakers. Apparently tiring of defending their policy against charges of being Socialistic, these members of the Socialist Party have sought to carry the war into the enemy’s camp. The form of attack is to endeavour to discredit private enterprise as a producing and distributive service or system.

In debate, a ready retort to such attack Would be' to review the record of public enterprise and to quote therefrom a thousand and one examples of its grievous inefficiency; its general utter lack of enterprise or initiative. Illustrations might bo readily drawn from every quarter of tho globe—indeed from Utopia itself, for in the Socialists’ paradise, Russia, public or State enterprise has run true to form, and as ever shows characteristic failure to deliver the goods. In Moscow itself, a return to contract building has had to be made. 'What an apostasy for the faithful!

To return home, what record here has State enterprise that anyone could regard it as ideal. Our railways cannot pay their way although relieved of every form of taxation, Our great hydro-electric system is almost unique in the world in having made no reduction in its charges during the past fifteen years.

Again, consider the most vaunted of all State enterprises, the Marketing Board, with a turnover of £25,000,000 or more a year—one instituted and conducted under our first Socialist Government and an organisation whose praises have been Sung to the skies by the Minister of Finance and lesser lights. For it most extravagant claims have been made, but an impartial survey of the record of this department of State reveals no justification for the. claims made. Actually, Australian selling privately conducted shows a slightly better record of achievement.

Charges and counter-charges might bo endlessly made, and as politicians in general are such masters at clouding the issue, the public run dire risks of becoming completely bewildered in the smoke-screens created. The chart and compass of fundamental principles are, therefore, a needed safeguard to understanding. Clearly, the majority of those who attack private enterprise have no real comprehension of what they are attacking. All too frequently they erect a straw dummy, a mere figment of imagination and then proceed to knock it over. The strange notion is actually current that private enterprise exists merely to serve those who conduct it. v The fact is, of course, that private enterprise exists solely to serve public needs. Any Section failing to do so simply dies.

There is one fundamental distinction between private and State enterprise. Under the former the public must be given service or the business dies. Under the latter the public must accept the service given however unsatisfactory it may be, or else go without. For private enterprise is ever competitive and State service is ever monopolistic and monopoly ever breeds inefficiency, waste and ill-service. Under private enterprise the consumer is master, the trader is servant in definite day by day relationship. 11l theory this is so, too, for State service, but in practice it is not so at all. To this fact all who have had experience of State departments’can testify.

By the very nature of the system, its crushing of initiative, its lack of selection on ability, its cog to cog mechanism, State or public service can never hope to challenge private enterprise in efficient service to the public. Finally, the most appalling condemnation of.all, State services are at the mercy of politics and politicians. They ever have been and ever will be.