INTERVIEW WITH PHIL ROBINSON.

Auckland Star, Volume XIX, Issue 281, 28 November 1888, Page 5

INTERVIEW WITH PHIL ROBINSON.

BOOM FOR SYDNEY PREDICTED.

NEW ZEALAND NOT SUFFI-

CIENTLY ADVERTISED.

(BY TELEOKArH. —OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

Dunedin, this day. In the course of an interview between the reporter of the Dunedin "Star" and Mr Phil Robinson, the well-known war correspondent for the London "jDaily Telegraph," who happened to be fellow passengers from Melbourne by the Wairarapa, Mr ilobinson said : I certainly am of opinion that the prosperity of Victoria will continue. The amount of English capital which has come into Victoria, and the still larger amount that is likely to come in next year, is bound to give Victoria a substantial basis of prosperity. The banks throughout the colony are pulling the strings so tight that the best men in Victoria can hardly be said to be worth anything in ready money, and though it is tolerably certain that when the payments for land purchases made during the recent boom become due, there will be considerable defaulting, I feel perfectly confident, seeing the extraordinary output of manufactured goods, and the business done by the large wholesale houses of Melbourne, whose waggons stream all day long down to the Railway Station to fill the vans bound for the country districts, that the present prosperity is as assured as any prosperity can be. Sydney has an "immediate boom before it, for the surplus enterprise of Victoria has been quietly and unobtrusively taking up large properties in and around that city, aud I know it will surprise many Victorian capitalists and Sydney landholders in the course of the next twelve months if there is not a repetition in Sydney of the Melbourne boom, and on terms as substantial and in the end satisfactory as in the sister colony. Reporter : Of course you have heard of the proposal to hold an Intercolonial Exhibition in Dunedin in about 12 months' time. Do you think that the proposal will tend to the infusion of foreign and Australian capital here ?

Mr Robinson : I do not know how it strikes you, but I look on it as a desperate resource. The real want of New Zealand is a proper advertisement. Youhaveneverbeen well represented, while you have often been miare presented, and it New Zealand had had the representatives at home that Victoria has had, you would have done well. As long as men like Froude go uncontradicted, Hew Zealand never can have that credit attaching to her which is her right as the best of all the Australasian colonies for natives of the British Islands to live in.

Reporter: Then from what you have learned and from what little opportunity has been afforded you of seeing this colony, you are most favourably impressed with it?

Mr Robinson : Oh, yes. There ia no doubt it is a grand country. In the course of a jerky conversation which ensued, Mr Robinson let drop the following remarks which may be worth jotting down for future observation :—lmperial federation is an impossibility, but intercolonial federation ought to be very near indeed. Had England such statesmen as Disraeli, or had Lord Salisbury a free hand, Australia, I believe, would be offered independence, with the promise of British protection against attack, on this one supreme condition, that the colonies themselves should federate on matters of intercolonial interest. Should the colonies have to appoint a Governor in common, they have the very man on the spot, and unless I am mistaken the dream is already his, and that man is Lord Carrington, than whom the united colonies of Australasia could find no better President.