The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1913. . A BIG OFFER.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 29, 3 February 1913, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1913. . A BIG OFFER.

The offer made by a great English firm to construct a number of important public works for the New South Wales Government, and also to find the whole of the money for the scheme—some ten millions sterling—is naturally exciting a good deal of attention, as being one .of the most interesting proposals ever placed before a colonial government. Some details of the offer are now available and they show that under some circumstances it would lie very readily accepted, for the Minister for Public Works admits that the firm making it stands amongst the first halfdozen of the biggest and straightest firms in the world engaged in this class of work, and further admits that the percentage for which the firm would undertake the supervision of the important works involved is quite as low as the Government could do it for themselves. But with a dominant Labour Party it is quite unlikely the scheme will be accepted. The firm making the proposition is that of Messrs Norton, Griffiths and Co., one of the world’s leading firms of the type that undertakes complete ventures from engineering to finance, on a huge scale. They are at present carrying out great works for the Candian and other Governments. They offered to carry out the whole of the works recommended by the expert consulting engineer whom the New South Wales Government recently brought out to advise on the subject, and to do this, without the State Government having to concern itself as to the state of the money market, at the rate of about £2,000,000 per annum. These works included the North Shore bridge, essential to join the two great population centres on Sydney Harbour, and which must be built on a scale to permit the biggest ships to pass under it, and to carry railway, tramway, vehicular, and loot traffic; tlu> North Const railway, a line of great importance, long discussed, actually entered upon, but not nearly completed ; the connection of the mineral centre at Broken Hill with the New South Wales railway system ac-

ross the Darling and tlio Central Plains; the construction of the eastern and western suburbs railways, and the city underground railway, which have come to solve the urgent tral-j fic problems facing the city of Sydney. The firm stated its willingness to undertake to finish the above-rneu-j tioned works in live years, payment to be made in 3i per cent inscribed! stock with twenty-five years’ currency, • and issued at £B7. Notxvithstanding that the whole of the works would be completed in at least a quarter-of the time they would take even if the Government set to work in real earnest to undertake them; that much money would eventually be saved, and that the Government would be relieved of the entire worry and responsibility which must accompany such undertaking, being committed to the day labour system of construction, it is not at all likely to go against the mandates of political labour, even for the country’s very great good.