Papuan Rubber
p. 23 · Read in the full issue
Preference.
Application for Removal.
A SOMEWHAT awkward position for the Federal Government is develop ing in connection with the sale of Papuan rubber in Australia.
It will be remembered that the Fed eral Government, at the urgent solicita tion of Sir Hubert Murray, last year, placed a special duty of fourpence per pound on raw rubber imported into Australia, with the provision that the rubber produced in Papua should be ex empt from duty. The result of this has been that there has been a sale in Aus tralia for all the Papuan rubber, and it has meant also that the price of rubber in Australia has been fourpence per pound higher than otherwise would have been the case. It did not mean that the rubber from other countries sold in Australia was fourpence per pound higher than the Papuan rubber.
The consumer in Australia pays exactly the same price for Papuan rubber, as he pays for any other rubber, but whereas the Australian customs received a duty of fourpence per pound from the rubber imported from other countries, the Papuan rubber-grower receives the fourpence that otherwise would have gone to the Customs.
As the rubber being imported from Papua is only a very small proportion of the total rubber consumed in Aus tralia, and therefore the duty represents a heavy tax on the rubber industry in Australia, the combined rubber manu facturers have urgently represented to the Federal Government that if the Fed eral Government will remove the duty, the rubber trade in Australia will pay a special bounty to the Papuan rubber growers, equal to fourpence per pound.
The net result of this would be that while the Australian rubber trade would be paying the same price as now for Papuan rubber, it would be getting fourpence per pound off all the other rubber used.
This seems a fair enough proposition —but another consideration now enters, namely, that of finance. It transpires that the total amount of duty collected on account of rubber by the Customs authorities in a year is in the vicinity of £ 460,000. If the Federal Government does what it has been asked to do, it will have to forfeit £460,000 worth of revenue per annum. If the users of rub ber goods in Australia were to get the benefit of this there might be some good argument in favour of the proposal, but an investigation shows that the cost of rubber goods to the consumer in Aus tralia has actually decreased since the fourpence per pound was paid placed on foreign rubber.
In these circumstances it seems very unlikely that any alteration will be made for the present in the present tariff in so far as it relates to rubber imports. (Later developments affecting the Papuan rubber industry are referred to elsewhere in this issue. )