A Modest Member of Parliament [Bert Kelly], The Australian Financial Review, March 4, 1977, p. 3. Reprinted in Economics Made Easy (Adelaide: Brolga Books, 1982), pp. 145-47, as “Change.”

One thing I hate above all others is change. Perhaps it is because I was brought up in the bush or perhaps it is because I am getting older, but I find that any change fills me with grave disquiet.

I go round muttering morbidly that the end of the world is at hand if any small change in almost anything is even contemplated.

So when I wrote a week or two ago about the economy being like a bucket of worms which was changing all the time, and if it wasn’t changing then it would start to die and the smell would be awful, I did it with tongue-in-cheek because I have a lot of secret sympathy for those resisting change.

But the truth is that the economy is indeed changing as accompanying figures show.

**
Percentage of Workforce Employed in Sectors in Australia
Year | Primary Production | Manufacturing Industry | Tertiary
1911 | 29.9 | 28.7 | 40.3
1921 | 25.8 | 31.2 | 42.0
1933 | 22.2 | 23.2 | 42.2
1947 | 17.3 | 26.0 | 49.5
1954 | 15.0 | 27.8 | 55.1
1961 | 12.1 | 27.0 | 55.4
1966 | 10.6 | 27.0 | 62.4
1971 | 08.8 | 23.2 | 67.1
1975 | 06.7 | 21.4 | 69.8
**

All but 1975 are census figures and they show that change has been occurring consistently and relentlessly.

The primary industry sector has been employing a consistently smaller percentage of the workforce and this is no surprise.

But not many realise that in 1911 we had 28.7 per cent of our workforce employed in manufacturing industry while in 1975 the figure was 21.4 per cent.

The tertiary sector has been increasing all along and this is a common picture in all developed countries. In other words, the bucket of worms has been turning.

So change is a continuing process and any government action that prevents the economy changing is likely to seriously damage our standard of living.

But I still have an inborn resistance to change similar to the [apocryphal] example I now quote. In 1828 Martin Van Buren (Governor of New York) wrote to President Jackson:

The canal system of this country is being threatened by the spread of a new form of transportation known as “railroads.” The Federal Government must preserve the canals for the following reasons:

1. If canal boats are supplanted by “railroads,” serious unemployment will result. Captains, cooks, drivers, hostlers, repairmen, and lock tenders, will be left without means of livelihood, not to mention the numerous farmers now employed in growing hay for horses.

2. Boatbuilders would suffer, and towline, whip and harness makers would be left destitute.

3. Canal boats are absolutely essential to the defence of the United States. In event of the expected trouble with England, the Erie Canal would be the only means by which we could ever move the supplies so vital to waging modern war.

For the abovementioned reasons the Government should create an Interstate Commerce Commission to protect the American people from the evils of “railroads” and to preserve the canals for posterity. As you may well know, Mr President, “railroad” carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 miles per hour by “engines,” which in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside, setting fire to the crops, scaring the livestock and frightening women and children. The Almighty certainly never intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed.

Some may sneer at Martin Van Buren but his heartfelt plea is very similar to that of people who say that their particular industry should be subsidised because it doesn’t want to face the trauma of change.

I, too, hate change and I have a lot of sympathy with the Prime Minister, who said on February 21 that “employers were tending to use machines rather than people in the productive process and if tariff protection for Australian industry was reduced this trend would worsen.”

I know it sounds rather like primitive Ludditism to contend that we should use men to do what machines could do better and cheaper, but change is uncomfortable, politically and socially. I will do what I can to resist it.

Mavis is delighted and I am relieved that the Prime Minister and I are at one. She is trying to buy a hand loom.