A POLICY OF GO-SLOW.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 April 1921, Page 7

A POLICY OF GO-SLOW.

Cockatoo Island is the most modern and efficiently equipped dockyard in Australia, and probably in the Southern Hemisphere. Until recently, however, its operation has been considerably hampered by industrial trouble, and sections of the highly-paid employees have deliberately practised a policy of go-slow, What Cockatoo Island methods mean to the taxpayer of Australia is evident from the case of the light cruiser Adelaide. The keel of this ship was laid in November, 1917. On July 28th, 1918, the hull was launched. To-day nearly 31 years later, the vessel is still far from completion, tend this notwithstanding the fact that most of her machinery, and her guns, and other equipment, Were constructed in England. The Adelaide, which is a sister ship to the Melbourne and Sydney, is practically identical in class with H.M.S. Chatham, which was built in Chatham dockyard and commissioned in one year &nd t-en months from the laying of her keel. A light cruiser— H.M.S. Caroline—of a later and faster type than the Adelaide, was completed in England during the war in ten months. H.M.S. Chatham cost the British taxpayer to build and equip £349.358. The expenditure on the Adelaide to date has -exceeded £1,000,000. Since the armistice a number of Royal Navy cruisers of the Adelaide type have been sold out of the service for breaking up, and others have been placed in reserve. The Adelaide, which has been under construction for nearly 3% years, is .therefore obsolete, while still unfinished.