A WORKERS' PARADISE.

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1418, 20 October 1923, Page 2

A WORKERS' PARADISE.

"GO SLOW" IX QUEENSLAND. Queensland has been described as a workers' paradise, but it is evidently a pinchbeck paradise. The Theodore Ministry, astute as its members have shown themselves to be, cannot create perpetual happiness simply by piling up deficits. Money lost on ruinous State enterprises and undertakings must be recovered from somebody. In the case of the Queensland railways the day of reckoning is apparently to be postponed as long as possible. In eight years of Labour administration the accumulated deficit has grown to £2,182,330, and there is no reason to suppose that it will be reduced by the end of the present financial year. The only sure way would be to bring the costs of management within income, but this might mean resistance to union demands—and things like this are not done in a workers' paradise. There are no "politics" in figures. Even Mr Theodore will have difficulty in explaining why, despite the huge losses incurred in operating the railways, the service is still inferior to and fares and freights are much higher than those in other non-Labour States. It is easy, of course, to understand why the. number of train miles is much less in proportion to the number of men employed than was the case before Labour achieved power. "Go slow" is the accepted doctrine in Queensland.