TASKS COMPLETED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25851, 23 May 1945, Page 6

TASKS COMPLETED

AUSTRALIAN INDUSTRIALISTS RETURNING TO CIVIL WORK CANBERRA, May 22. With the ending of the war _in Europe leading Australian industrialists who were called upon in years of emergency are leaving the Commonwealth service. The Minister for Munitions Mr N. J. Makin, to-day announced the resignation of-Australia’s Directorgeneral of Munitions, Mr Essington Lewis, and other high executives of the Munitions Department. From June 1, permanent Government officials will administer the department. , Mr Makin said that, following a recent trip abroad, Mr Lewis had conferred with the Prime Minister, Mr Curtin It was then decided that the purposes for which Mr Lewis’s services had been sought had been achieved, and that Australia was now approaching the reconstruction period. Mr Lewis and several of his associates had been closely connected with the Commonwealth’s industrial war effort during five years of intensive effort. They had built up munitions production from practically negligible proportions to an exnenditurs running into hundreds of millions of pounds. Mr Lewis, who was appointed chief general manager of Broken Hill Proprietary, Ltd., in 1938, has been an outstanding figure in Australia s thriving heavy industries, ana is generally acknowledged as having the greatest responsibility for the extraordinarily rapid development of Australia s war industries. He became Director-gen-eral of Munitions in May, 1940.