N.S.W. IRRIGATION SCHEME

Evening Post, Volume CI, Issue 51, 1 March 1921, Page 7

N.S.W. IRRIGATION SCHEME

PERIOD OF MUDDLEMENT TO END, ■ •

CritOH ODS OWN COKRISrONDENT.)

SYDNEY, 22nd February.

The New South Wales Government announces that the present system ot control of the great Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area is to end, and that something new is to be introduced with a^ view to making the scheme self-supporting. The Murrumbidgee Irrigation .Area, on which have grown up tfie towns of Leetop_ and Yanco, is the, biggest venture of the kind in this part of the world. The Murrumbidgee River was harnessed by the huge dam at Burrinjuck, and the water directed over a wide area of most fertile but arid country. Upon the area thus irrigated there have grown up flourishing rural industries—fruit-grow-ing, poultry-raising, pig-farming, and general farming of all kinds. The New South Wales Government, in the past ten years, has sunk no less than £6,000,000 in this huge undertaking.; The taxpayers did not object. It was felt that a fine flourishing series of settlements were being established which must eventually add much to the general wealth of the State. But,, year after year, a loss on working of not less than a quarter of a million sterling has been recorded, and at last it has been borne in upon everyone that these extensive settlements ought really to be paying their way and that the annual loss is really the result of the operations of muddling officialdom. All the State industrial undertakings labour under this curse of officialdom. On paper, they ought to be paying handsomely; but under the control of worthy old gentlemen; who have been provided with comfortable posts, they almost invariably eat heavily into the State's revenues. In the few cases where they'have been put under efficient business management and freed from their load of accumulated deficits they have done well—and this is what may happen to the Irrigation Area.

The Commission which administers the Area has been the subject of most scathing, reports by auditors. "The conclusion arrived at has been that it was futile even to make suggestions* let alone to arrest improper expenditure, irregular procedure or the piling up of unwarranted debts" was one of th? Auditor-General's remarks. The following undertakings carried on on the Area by the Commission all made losses last year—abattoirs, water supply, canning factory, accommodation houses, bacon factory, power-house, etc.