Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), Wednesday 20 January 1954, page 2


WAY TO LUNACY

TJOW does M. Ryan

11 C¿Argus," lá/1) sug-

gest that his objective of a self-sufficient Austra

' lia with a population of

50 million be reached?

Not by maintaining and extending protective tariffs, let us hope.

Exporting food ls not es-capism, but merely the common-sense way of obtain-ing certain manufactured products as cheaply as pos-sible. We import them in ex-change for goods which we can produce more cheaply.

To attempt to obtain selfsufficiency by the extension of protective tariffs would probably mean, that we would cease to , have any ex-portable surplus to pay for imports long before we be-came independent of the need for imports,

i That problem could onlj ¡be solved by a lowering oí 1 our living standards, a ¡policy which would penalise ourselves without benefiting anyone else. .

It would De neither altru-

ism nor escapism, merely

lunacy.

IAN H. LEYS (Mt. Beck-with).