AUSTRALIAN FINANCES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3519, 23 August 1921, Page 19

AUSTRALIAN FINANCES.

NEW SOUTH WALES LOAN. LONDON, August 17. Tlie newspapers publish a cablegram stating that Mr Storey (Premier of New South Wales) has arranged to borrow £19.5000,030 at 5i per cent, in London, spread over three years, at 5£ per cent, for public works and land resumption. Financial circles doubt the accuracy of the statement as it is- impossible to forecast conditions in the loan market- even for a week ahead. They instance the inability of New South Wales to place a £3,000,000 loan in June in the same manner as Mr Storey intends. It is also pointed out that some New South Wales stocks are purchasable at a. price yielding 137 s 6d per cent, and 133 s 6d. MR HUGHES’S PARADISE. LONDON, August 20. Mr Hughes addressed about 100 bankers and other prominent financiers at Australia House. In the course of a speech lasting an hour he eulogised Australia as one of the most attractive countries in the world for investment and emigration. He described Mildura as a veritable paradise without angels and flaming swords. Revolution was impossible in Australia, because wealth there was more evenly distributed than anywhere else except New* Zealand. “FINANCIAL TIMES ” CRITICISM. LONDON, August 20. The Financial Times states that Mr Hughes's invitation to bankers and financiers to meet- him "to discuss the question of Australian finance” seemed to indicate that Mr Hughes, knowing the strong opinions entertained in the city regarding particular aspects of the Australian financial policy, had resolved to tackle and remove all unpleasant impressions. Any expectation of this kind was disappointed. No one could have guessed from the proceedings at the meeting at Australia House that British investors had complained. Take the instance of companies whose one desire was to sell land, and who have been subjected to penal taxation as though obstinately withholding land from settlement. Mr Hughes’s address was an unconscious revelation of the psychology of Australian statesmen regarding finance. After cataloguing Australia’s flocks and herds, boundless wheatfields, and vast mineral resources, and showing that for all borrowings there are tangible assets which are ever multiplying, he believes he has exhausted the question of Australian finance as it affects past and perhaps prospective lenders in Britain.