AUSTRALIA TO-DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 108, Issue 18165, 1 November 1930, Page 24 (Supplement)

AUSTRALIA TO-DAY.

HER ECONOMIC CONDITION PEOPLE THERE OPTIMISTIC. Conditions in Australia were referred to by Captain C. J. Kerr, of Geraldine, who has just returned from a visit to the Commonwealth. He said that so far as he had been able to learn, opinion was divided as to the period it would take Australia to regain a normal economic state. He had met a number of prominent people in the business world, who were confident that Australia would be in a good, sound position in n little while. Sir James Murdoch had expressed the opinion to him "that Australia would be on her feet within 18 months"; whereas Mr James Keld, at one time head of the Commonwealth Bank, considered that it would take from four to five years for the country to recover. Others again predicted that it would take two years.

Captain Kerr said that his own view was that the future prosperity of Australia was largely contingent upon the kind of Government the people elected, especially in New South Wales. Sir James Murdoch had told him that the Commonwealth Government was doing everything humanly possible to help the country but of its economic morass. Business Conditions In Sydney. Speaking of business conditions in Sydney, Captain Kerr said that shopkeepers was not having a rosy time, and he instanced cases where, as the result of falling trade, business people had been compelled to reduce their staffs. This was due solely to the fact that the people had not the purchasing power of a few years ago, and were not able to go in for things they bought on a lavish scale when conditions were good. Sheep farmers running up to a hundred thousand sheep were finding things pretty hard. One such had told him it was all bunkum for people to tell him they could make 10 per cent, on their capital out of sheep. He had not been able to make 2 per cent, on his capital. Concluding, Captain Kerr said the country, with its wonderful potentialities, was bound to recover.