POST-WAR PROGRAMME

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 227, 24 August 1945, Page 5

POST-WAR PROGRAMME

AUSTRALIA’S BIG PLAN

, CANBERRA, Aug. 23

The State Premiers endorsed at a National Works Council meeting a first-priority programme of post-war works at an estimated cost of £192,889,000. The Premiers decided that no schedule of national works agreed to by the council should be released for publication because it- would he an embarrassment whenever any particular work could not he gone on with. An amount of £12,240,000 for housing programmes, for which tho Commonwealth Government has accepted financial responsibility, was included in the Government 'loan programmes totalling £31,023,000, which were approved by the Loan Council. In addition, a total of £3,348,000 was approved for semi-Govornmental and local authorities. The Federal Prime Minister (Mr

Oliiflcy) gave an undertaking that the necessary special steps to expedite the release of technical men from the Services to assist in planning post-war works will he taken. Mr Chifley also offered financial assistance to the States both for capital and operating costs of industry to further the policy of decentralisation. Declaring that decentralisation was essential in the national interest, Mr Chifley said it was the Commonwealth’s duty to give more sympathy to the smaller and weaker States than to industrially strong New South AVales and Victoria.