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

assistance rather than of reliance upon individual energy and effort; while Governments, always exposed to interested political pressure, are prone to give that assistance rather than to see industries disappear, their capital lost and the workers engaged in them forced to seek other employment. Thus protection tends to grow and to cover an ever wider field, its own growth being productive of the very conditions which lead to its further growth. Some- thing of this kind has, we think, taken place in Australia. We believe that the policy of protection has, in some respects, been unscientifically carried out; that it has been extended to cover some interests at least which do not deserve it ; that the total burden of the Tariff has probably reached the economic limits, and that an increase in this burden might threaten the standard of living. 54. The case for protection is strongest in regard to those in- dustries which can claim that, having the home market. secured so them and mainly using home produced commodities as their raw material, they can and do supply the community with their goods at a price equal to or not malerially greater than that at which similar goods could be imported from overseas without a duty, but that the protection is necessary because, but for it, powerful combinations of oversea producers could, by under- cutting their prices, drive them out of business, and having done so could for the future charge as much as the Australian consumer sould be forced to pay. This is a case which commands all possible respect, but the corollary of it is that the measure of the extent bo which it can be made out is the measure of the extent to which protection is, on pure economic grounds, justifiable. We are thus provided with a working canon of efficiency and may say that those industries are efficient which can supply or which are likely within a reasonable measure of time to be able to supply their goods at a price not greatly exceeding the cost of similar goods imported free of duty, and not in any case exceeding that cost hy more than the community is prepared, with its eyes open, on other than pure economic grounds, to pay for the maintenance of the industries in Australia. Efficiency in this sense should, we think, be generally the condition of protection. Other things being equal, those industries are most likely to be efficient which, produc- ing goods comparatively simple in character and in wide demand, tan obtain the benefits of mass production for the Australian market ; but mass production is not everything, and it may well be that a small industry producing a commodity for which there is only a limited demand may be able, by the vigorous application of brains and energy to its task, to supply Australian requirements at a reasonable price and thus prove itself a worthy object for Protection. 55. A further condition of protection should be that every recipient of it should be liable at any time to be called upon to furnish the Government with the fullest information as to the costs of his products, the prices at which they are sold, and the Efficiency as vcondition f protec- ion. [Information regarding wrotected in- Justries to be supplied to- Government

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