COST SIX MILLIONS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 39, 17 February 1943, Page 4

COST SIX MILLIONS

AUSTRALIAN AERODROME ACHIEVEMENTS IN YEAR (Recd. 6.5 p.m.) Canberra, Feb. 16.) Reviewing the achievements of | the Allied Works Council, the Minister for the Interior, Senator J. S. Collings, said that in the first year of its existence the council had placed under construction works valued at £65.000,000. Expenditure had been consistent, at the rate of £1,000,000 a week. , Among the works undertaken by thd council were: For the Navy, graving docks and oil storage facilities, boom and anti-submarine defences, stores, and barracks; for the Army, strategic roads, railways, bridges, and hospitals; for the Air Force, aerodromes and installations and training schools; foe munitions and aircraft production departments, factories in which aircraft and every type of munitions are bcinj manufactured, and railways. A network of 5000 miles of strategic roads, the equivalent, of a highway from Melbourne to Tokio, had been carved across the Continent, and hundreds of aerodromes had been constructed. One of these had cost £6.000.000 and two others £4,000.000. To-day the council has finished 750 major undertakings and has 1200 more on its books. In addition to thesa undertakings 5000 minor each costing less than £5OOO, are planned. More than 53,000 men are at work under control of the council. , The Australian War Cabinet hasj approved the principle that alii refugee and enemy aliens made] availably by the manpower author-] ity should be called up immediately' by the Allied Works Council. J