MONEY LEAVES N.S.W. FOR OTHER STATES.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 144, 19 June 1931, Page 1

MONEY LEAVES N.S.W. FOR OTHER STATES.

MIS-GOVERNMENT HAS HAD SERIOUS EFFECT. • (Special to the “ Star.”) SYDNEY, May 25. Business and economic conditions in New South Wales have reached a stage unprecedented, according to some of the oldest business men, even in the days that followed the bank crashes of the 'nineties. Basically, of course, the State is sound; but with the extraordinary threats by the. Government driving confidence into the background, industry has languished on every hand. An instance of the effect of unstable Government was given recently, when Mr C. H. Hoskins, a director of Australian Iron and Steel, Ltd., addressed a meeting at Dapto, New South Wales. In endeavouring to show how Governments created a lack of confidence in investors, and how that affected the very men and women he was addressing, he drew a word picture from his own company’s experiences. Effect of Repudiation. Australian Iron and Steel, Ltd., had negotiated a loan of £150,000 from a big London group for developmental work at its Port Kembla furnaces. The loan would have employed 500 men for two years. Mr Lang’s repudiation of the London bondholders and his other radical legislation led to a cancellation of the loan, and the firm had not only to close down sections of'its works, but to cut down production in other respects, so that fewer men are employed than at any time previously. Investors steadfastly refused to back undertakings in this State while the Government is tied to the policy of repudiation; in fact, while this Government lasts They are sending their money to other States for investment there. In Queensland, for instance, there is available any amount of money for investment, and although there are thousands of unemployed in the Northern State, the Government there has been able to put into effect a system of intermittent employment on developmental work that is rapidly absorbing the workless. “ Canvastown ” in Sydney Domain. In New South Wales the position grows worse rapidly. There have never been so many tramping the country roads in rearch for work, which it is impossible to find in the city. It is an almost endless stream from one end of the State to another, the unfortunate aspect being that many women are forced to the same hopeless tramping. In the Sydney Domain, five minutes’ walk from the heart of the city, a miniature encampment of unemployed has risen in a few months. At present the occupants of the improvised tents rely on the bounty of kind-Hearted persons who make daily pilgrimages to the spot with soup and other food. A group of citizens, so affected by the spectacle of helpless poverty at their very front door, has started a fund for their sustenance, and this, with the aid of Sydney newspapers, led by the “ Sydney Morning Herald,” is rapidly assuming substantial proportions. Sydney is making no attempt to hide the position. All day long a huge queue of dole-seekers is lined up on one of the unoccupied wharves at Circular Quay itself. With the Government making the position worse every day by its legislation, pessimists anticipate the possibility of food riots as winter takes its toll of morale, and the Communists, to whom this position is a Heaven-sent opportunity, put over their insidious propaganda. Hawkers and Street Barrows. A pathetic side of the picture, if there is one side any more pathetic than the other, s the increase in the numbers of Sydney’s itinerant hawkers. All day long householders answer their pathetic attempts to sell small articles. In the streets of the city fruit barrows are receiving greater latitude, with the result that they are like mushrooms. And in the busiest thoroughfares down-at-heel mendicants seek to sell boot laces, comphor and such things for the price of a cheap meal. In the memory of business men the situation has not been so black in a decade. New South Wales will pull through, but this experience of mis-government and its effects will be a lasting lesson to the individual.