(2 of 3)
Given under my Hand and the Seal of the Commonwealth, at Canberra, this fourth day of April, One thousand nine hundred and thirty, and in the twentieth year of His Majesty's reign.
By His Excellency's Command,
F. M. FORDE
for Minister of State for Trade and Customs.
God save the King!
In Canberra last week Australian canaries were beginning to feel the pinch of singing on Australian seed instead of the imported sort to which they have been used. The embargo on chutney, peanut butter, cigarets and wine means that "Major Grey's Chutney," "BeechNut Peanut Butter," "Abdullah Cigarets" and "Mumm's Cordon Rouge" are totally excluded from Australia. It is not a question of scaling a tariff wall. This is an absolute embargo: "Peanut butter shall not pass!" The exclusion is as rigid against products of Mother England as against those of the U. S. or China.
It was Laborite Prime Minister James Henry Scullin who put through this amazing Act (TIME, April 14). With as deeply rutted a single-track mind as Lenin's or Mussolini's he has highly resolved that Australia shall reverse her unfavorable trade balance, cut down her spending and resultant borrowing abroad, and rescue the Australian worker from unemployment by forcing the creation of new home industries. Australians shall raise birdseed, crush peanuts into butter, perfect their imitations of Champagne, build snorting locomotives, and jump homemade Stump Jump Plows.
Nor is this embargo all. Last week the Prime Minister, who is also Commonwealth Treasurer (he has been called "The Snowden of Canberra"), made his budget speech. He began by announcing that the Commonwealth Treasury has a deficit of £14,000,000 ($68,000,000). Then, leaning from the rostrum tense and resolute he said, displaying a sheaf of papers: "I have in my hand a new table of tariffs, the most sensational in the history of the Commonwealth."
Nor was this all. In addition the Prime Minister proposed, with every prospect that they will be carried, a schedule of internal taxes under which the Treasury would receive 2½% of the sales price of everything bought in Australia other than certain selected commodities. Conservative opponents of Laborite Scullin figured out hastily and announced with vociferous shouts: "Such tariffs and taxes will increase the cost of living £i a head [$4.86] a week! Shame!"
Quietly but inflexibly Mr. Scullin retorted that his Government must have this money. He estimated that to make ends meet temporarily the Commonwealth will have to borrow another $150,000,000 in London. After that he hopes that Australia, by rigid economies and much hard work (Australians have the reputation among other white peoples of the British Empire of being "easy going," virtually loafers), will be able to pay her way. In general the Commonwealth Treasury's present deficit is due to much "advanced" legislation doggedly passed by the Laborites to pay unemployment doles and confer other benefits upon the proletariat.