A GREAT COUNTRY

Southland Times, Issue 19897, 16 June 1926, Page 6

A GREAT COUNTRY

REMARKABLE GROWTH PROGRESS IN SYDNEY SIR JOSEPH WARD IMPRESSED. (Special to the Times.) Auckland, June 15. The unbounded faith of the Australian people in the future greatness of their country made a great impression on Sir Joseph Ward, a former Prime Minister of New Zealand, who returned by the Ulimaroa from a flying visit to Sydney and Melbourne. Sir Joseph Ward said he found that Sydney had grown to a remarkable extent since his last visit and that building on a large scale was going on at a remarkable rate. Sir Joseph said that a visitor could not fail to note the indications of progress in Sydney and in Melbourne as well although not quite to the same extent. In the Victorian city money appeared to be plentiful and was certainly being spent on large buildings of all types and of the latest design. One of the largest undertakings he inspected was the Sydney harbour bridge, and he was informed that the structure was now going to cost considerably more than £7,000,000. Recently there had been an increase of £1,000,000 in the estimate for the bridge and this without any extra work being entailed. This had been brought about by a reduction of the working week to 44 hours, but he had been informed that this material addition to the cost was not being borne by the contractors but by the Government in the terms of the contract. His impression was that when the bridge was successfully completed and open for traffic it would be one of the greatest engineering feats of the world. A feature of New South Wales that impressed itself upon Sir Joseph was the almost general belief in the importance of secondary industries. Everywhere he found people preaching the doctrine of local manufacture. This was interesting in view of the fact that in the last few months there had been a great reduction in the value of exports with about the same falling off in the value of imports for the same period. The condition of the country was sound, but if in the future the volume of exports went down and the imports did not correspondingly go down then inevitably the creation of finance would be a serious problem. This was a possibility that required careful watching. Traffic problems have increased with the growth of population in Sydney, and in this connection he was interested in the progress that is being made with the construction of underground railways which in his opinion are going to revolutionise traffic. In the last ten years, to his own knowledge, the increase in traffic had been enormous, and of all the measures taken to relieve the congestion this was easily the best move yet made. His opinion was that the Sydney trams would eventually have to go underground. “The people of New South Wales have the greatest confidence in the future of their State, and there can be no doubt that Sydney is destined to be one of the greatest cities in the world. They certainly have some acute political differences but at the base of it all is the fact that with the people it is New South Wales first.”