AUSTRALIAN SUGAR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21115, 24 February 1932, Page 8

AUSTRALIAN SUGAR.

The affirmation that the sugar industry is a burden rather than an advantage to Australia, which has been made by the Auditor-General of the Commonwealth in his annual report, is not a new discovery. Exactly the same conclusion has been reached by many other people in Australia, some of whom have placed a higher estimate than £7,000,000 on the cost of the bounty to sugar-growers, which is paid through prices fixed by the agreement, between the Commonwealth and the Queensland Governments, and enforced by an absolute embargo on importations. Production this season is estimated at 580,000 tons, and export at 250,000 tons, leaving 330,000 tons for domestic consumption, so that the bounty of £3O will substantially exceed £7,000,000, even when allowance is made for the rebate on the sugar content of exported manufactures. The price paid to growers and the price charged to consumers are, however, fixed by the Governments, in pursuance of the "White Australia" policy, and as successive inquiries have demonstrated, do not, as the Commonwealth AuditorGeneral assumes, place the Colonial Sugar Refining Company in a "prosperous and monopolistic position." The company does not grow cane, and consequently does not receive the bounty. It does not earn profits because it has virtually a monopoly of the refining industry, nor is the fact of its monopoly proof that its profits are excessive. They have been repeatedly scrutinised in both Australia and New Zealand, and every charge of exploitation has been proved groundless. Even during the war, when high profits were almost automatic, the company con-

sistently kept prices in New Zealand lower than anywhere eke in the world. The company is prosperous and has a virtual monopoly of the refining industry solely because it has consistently applied the most scientific methods to technical processes and the most careful management to the conduct of its business, so that costs have been maintained at a level none of its competitors have attained. The latest Australian attack is a typical expression of the jealousy aroused by the contrast between successful private, enterprise and the dismal record of incompetency and insolvency shared by State enterprises. The sooner it is realised that private enterprise mobilises knowledge, skill and efficiency to the benefit of the community, and that the public interest is best served by encouraging and developing private enterprise, the sooner will there be an end to doles and unemployment taxes.