Labour Costs In
p. 24 · Read in the full issue
Australian Territories
Letter to the Editor
IT is indeed pleasing to know that you will shortly be issuing the handbook for sale. This has been needed badly by that section of the community ass ciated with the land and its products in these islands However, with the proposed increase in native labour costs which the present Canberra Government is imposing on plantations and employers in New Guinea, the economic factors in comparison to other areas in the world, producing the same products, will come into play; and, if our costs are such that we cannot compete on the world’s market, and Aus tralia is indisposed to extend its benevo lent policy to the “exploiting” planters and miners, then ruin and unemployment will be inevitable.
To enable me to make some comparison I would be obliged if you could obtain or furnish me the following information;— (1) What is the cost of NL units per day or per month in DEI (Sumatra, Borneo, etc.), cost to include housing, food, etc.? (I understand NL feed themselves.) (2) Are women employed in those Ter ritories and on what basis? (Rub ber-tapping is work which is per formed.) (3) Hours of work and conditions in
Dei?
(4) Cost of NL in Malaya, and condi tions, etc.? , . (5) Cost of NL in Philinpines, and in Burma and Indo-China?
If Australia is prepared to make an “economic bloc” of her Territories in New Guinea, and take the tropical products at enhanced prices consistent with in creased costs, then there may be justi fication for the rise, but this is not stated or guaranteed. , What distance inland are the farthest upland plantations of rubber, etc-., in Sumatra. Java, and Malaya? And what are the communications —road, or rivers.
Papua.
I am, etc.,
H. T. Kienzle.
EDITORIAL NOTE; We have no re liable figures to show native labour costs in the Indonesian Territories before the war. In any case, it is most unlikely that those rates will continue—it is prob able that there will be a general up wards revision of all labour rates through out the Pacific. The noint is important Australia’s Pacific Territories cannot compete with other tropical Territories in world markets if there is great dis parity in labour costs.