Report of the British Economic Mission to Australia

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 179824683X

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-182286

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Report of the British Economic Mission to Australia

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: His Majesty's Stationery Office

Year of publication:: 7th January 1929

Scope:: 63 S.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part II. Main problems

Collection:: Economics Books

)y Difficulty of applying a policy of rotection. the settled policy of Australia; that it would be idle to suggest its abolition even if we thought that such a course would be expedient ; that we must deal with Australia as she is and realize that changes oy way of reduction of the tariff may lead to loss of capital and the discharge of workers from industries already built up under the tariff shelter ; and that while the undoubted effect of protection in the diversion of production from its natural course must have resulted in some cost, it is not certain that if the natural course of production has been continued it would have maintained the present population without some reduction in income per head, due to pressure upon inferior or less accessible land and to lower prices ‘or a greater volume of exports. 51. But in the carrying ouf in detail of a policy of protection, 1» task of immense difficulty, there is much room for human falli- »ility. Protection, as its very name implies, is designed for the veak, and the weakness may be that of infancy, that of temporary rvilment, or that of inefficiency. It may well be expedient to give artificial assistance from the public to a promising infant industry, though, since its output must necessarily in the early stages be small, such assistance is in our judgment better given oy way of bounty, the cost of which can be exactly measured, than by way of a protective customs duty which will raise, to an extent difficult to compute, the cost to the community of the whole of its supplies of the commodity which the infant industry is designed but is not yet able sufficiently to produce. But it is to be observed shat infant indusiries are apt to take a long time to grow up and to be ready to dispense with their swaddling clothes, and the process of reaching maturity tends to be further delayed when the costs of the products of other industries required by the infant industry are increased by measures similar to those which have veen adopted in its own case. It behoves the State, therefore, to teep a very careful watch upon the whole range of protected industries, and to be sure that protection or bounties are not continued so long or given so freely that their cost outweighs the oenefit to be derived by the community from the establishment of the industries in its midst. 52. An instance of temporary ailment would be afforded if an established industry were assailed by a campaign of dumping from overseas. In such a case it would be reasonable to afford protection while the trouble lasted, but the protection might well be reconsidered when the cause for it had been removed. 53. The protection of the inefficient is something which, we imagine, no one would be prepared to defend, but it is in practice not easy to avoid it; for the case for a measure of protection for an industry is apt to be based on what is needed to keep the weaker of those engaged in it alive. And protection itself tends to have, though it does not always have in fact, a debilitating ‘nfluence and to promote habits of dependence upon Government

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