GREAT PROSPERITY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16360, 7 June 1927, Page 7

GREAT PROSPERITY

IN AUSTRALIA TO-DAY VETERAN STATESMAN’S VIEWS (Special to tlie Herald.) AUCKLAND, this day. “Australia is enjoying great prosperity, and is a living example of hew little politics can make or break a country,” stated Sir Joseph Carruthers, a prominent New South Wales politician, who was a passenger on the Maunganui from Sydney yesterday. Sir Joseph, who was Premier of New South Wales from 1904 to 1907, is the recognised loader of the Nationalist, or anti-Socialist forces in the Legislative Council, and he is very bitter against the Lang administration. “I am not a prophet, or the son of a prophet, but it is my opinion that Mr. Lang will go after the next elections,'' stated Sir Joseph. He added that the vitality of Australia lay in its vast natural resources, and in the fine race that had sprung up from the country’s hardy pioneers. No amount of political muddling could prevent its progress or prosperity.

Sir Joseph declared that the craze for the motor car was, perhaps, being carried too far. On the other .hand, if people who could well afford it were spending money, then it was reacting "to the" good of "the whole country.

“I think our legislation is being designed too much along mollycoddling lines," declared Sir Joseph. “We have, old age pensions which relieve well-to-do sons of poor parents from fulfilling their obligations in lending a helping hand to aged people. We have-widows’ pensions which tend to increase the number of poor widows, and then there is talk of child endowment, whieli will relieve the responsibilities of parents and throw them on the poor old State." Although he is 70 years old Sir Joseph is still very active and takes a keen interest, in the welfare of the Commonwealth. He is a true Imperialist, and looks forward to the day when Australia will be rid of Labor rule.