ECONOMIC ADVISER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23542, 4 July 1938, Page 11

ECONOMIC ADVISER

NEW SOUTH WALES MOVE UNIVERSITY LECTURER’S POST 9 (From Our Own Correspondent) SYDNEY, June 24. The New South Wales Government has made an innovation by appointing from outside its ordinary departmental advisers an economic expert to assist it in making decisions affecting commercial and financial affairs. There has been ample warning, particularly in conditions overseas and the consequent effect on the prices of Australian exports, that there may be a recession in prosperity during the next 12 months, and the Stevens Cabinet believes that it should have expert advice immediately available to interpret signs and portents. Dr E. R. Walker, a brilliant young' lecturer in economics at the Sydney University,, has been appointed to this important post for a year. One of the big tasks facing him may be to advise the Government on the bearing of national insurance on State finances. “ I shall have to make studies of world economic conditions and their effect on Australian policy,” he said, “ and to advise the Government on questions of finance and economics. My advice will, of course, be supplementary to that which the Government regularly obtains from its specialised departmental officers. The extension of social services during the depression the Commonwealth’s plan for national insurance, and the recent fall in export prices, all raise problems regarding which economic science should be able to contribute something to guide the judgment of statesmen.” In the United Kingdom each important department of Government had on its staff one or more economic advisers, he said, and a similar practice was adopted in other countries. Australian Governments in recent years had frequently engaged university economists for advice on particular problems, and had appointed some to full-time positions. Dr Roland Wilson (Commonwealth Statistician) entered the public service as economist to the Commonwealth Treasury, after being lecturer in the University of Tasmania. The former director of the Queensland Bureau of Industry (Mr J. B. Brigden) was a professor in Tasmania, and the present director (Mr Colin Clark) was lecturer in statistics at Cambridge. The New South Wales Government Statistician has a number of Sydney graduates on his staff.

Dr Walker is a graduate of Sydney and Cambridge. In 1931 he went abroad on a Rockefeller Fellowship, and after two years at Cambridge obtained the degree of doctor of philosophy in the faculty of economics.