BUSINESS ABROAD: The Boom in Australia

Gathering in Canberra last week to celebrate their tenth year in office, the leaders of Australia's Liberal Party looked upon their nation's economic progress with warm and prideful eye. Said Prime Minister Robert G. Menzies: "The whole face of the land is being changed. No other country of comparable size or population in the world is so busy building its future." On the same day, a crowd of 1,400 in Sydney watched the opening of a $3,300,000 plywood factory spreading over 14½ acres of onetime swampland; McCulloch Motors Corp. of Los Angeles announced that it would start making outboard motors in Australia; the Sydney Stock Exchange noted that share prices had risen to a level 33% higher than a year ago; and the government could say that unemployment was at 49,077, or barely 1% of the 4,000,000-man labor force.

The boom has given the 10 million Australians a standard of living (per capita income: $1,232) that ranks with that of the top nations outside the U.S., and is higher than Great Britain's. Australians eat more meat (nearly 300 Ibs. annually), consume more fruit, cereals and sugar than either Americans or Britons. Except for the U.S. and Canada, they own more motor vehicles (244 for every 1,000 people), enjoy more TV sets (70 for every 1,000) and telephones (200 per 1,000) than almost any other nation. All this Australia gets from a burgeoning industry and agriculture that are racing ahead in seven-league strides.

Some milestones of progress:

¶ Gross national product has leaped from $4.9 billion to $13 billion in ten years, with a 6% increase in fiscal 1959 alone.

¶ Industrial production has tripled to $10 billion, with a 162% increase in steel (to 3.2 million tons), 133⅓% jump in electricity, a 100% jump in cement. In washing machines alone, Australia's appliance makers have gone from 6,500 units in 1948 to 181,400 last year.

¶ Exports are up to $1.9 billion annually, with a 220% increase in minerals, themselves a $1 billion industry. At the same time, imports have been held to $1.8 billion as Australia supplies more of its own needs.

¶Population has grown at the rate of 2.2% annually, helped by a liberal immigration policy that has brought nearly 1,500,000 new Australians into the land since 1947 (TIME, Nov. 2).

Help for Free Enterprise. A large part of the credit for the growth goes to Prime Minister Menzies' government, which had the great good sense to help private enterprise uncover the riches of the country. A basic move by Menzies' Liberal government was to ensure peace with Australia's strike-inclined unions. Under the Labor government that preceded Menzies' Liberals, Australia's key unions, then mainly Red-dominated, all but paralyzed the nation by strikes. The situation became so bad during a Red-organized coal strike that the government ordered army troops to man the mines.

Menzies strengthened the powers of arbitration courts, also worked hard for better working conditions and labor-management relations. Result: Australia is now enjoying its quietest industrial relations in 24 years with only 185,000 working days lost from strikes in the first six months of 1959 v. 1,100,000 in 1956.