EMPIRE POPULATION

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 48, Issue 83, 18 January 1928, Page 5

EMPIRE POPULATION

SETTLING WASTE PLACES. TWO AUSTRALIAN NEEDS. RIGHT PEOPLE WITH CAPITAL. (Per Press Association— Copyright.) (Received This Day, 10.30.a.m.) v PERTH, Tins Day. Sir Robert Home (formerly British Chancellor of the Exchequer), after a month in Australia, is returning to England via New Zealand and Canada. In an interview Sir Robert Home said: "As far as one can see, two things needful in Australia are an addition of the right kind of people and a certain amount of capital. If you think of the Empire as a unity you must be startled by the irregular and unscientific distribution of its citizens throughout the available areas. The situation to-day is more analagous than ever. We have too many people where they are not wanted, and too few where they are vitally necessary to the process ot. development. A distinguished American once asked me why we could not ehiit the population to places where it could render the most valuable service, but the problem is not so easy as it looks, and if one desires to learn how hard it is one has only to remember how many schemes there are in existence, promulgated both by the Home and by the Dominion Governments and individual States, involving considerable expenditure of public money. Nevertheless the problem must be solved, and not merely because of the uneconomical distribution of our population but for reasons involved in the second consideration that the ivelfare of any community and its progress depends upon utilising to the full the productive elements which exist within its shores. If the raw resources of the earth are neglected, the market within which the manufactures of the country can be sold is to that extent limited. The more you increase the number of people on the land the greater is the. market which you create for the sale of the products 'of the towns."