STRONG ATTACK.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 48, Issue 144, 29 March 1928, Page 4

STRONG ATTACK.

AUSTRALIAN MIGRATION. MR HUGHES CONDEMNS POLICY. FOREIGN ELEMENTS DISLIKED. (Press Association—Copyright.) (Received This Day, 12.5 p.m.) SYDNEY, This Day. Mr W. M. Hughes (ex-Prime Minister of Australia.) } addressing the Nanionalist Association, made a strong attack on the Federal Government's immigration policy. Mr Hughes said: Our ideal for Australia was a democratic country peopled by men and women of the British race and of British birth. The immigration policy was not compatible with that ideal. He condemned the arrangement of allowing in ai large number of Italians, and the freedom given Ho Soviet agents to enter. The Soviet stood for something definite, so did Mussolini. We seemed to stand half-, way between the two. He asked, to whom did Australia belong—to us or to Mussolini, or to the Soviet agents? He appealed to Australians to make very definite and certain and not to take orders from Moscow or Mussolini. The last-named ibad but to rattle the sword in its scabbard, and are we to allow his grandmothers, uncles and aunts to enter Australia?

Mr Hughes referred to America refusing to accept Australian musicians, yet we allowed the scum' of America to come here. -We took those things lying down. For many years America stood for a policy of making the country the metilng-pot of Europe. She got people there who were the scum of Europe. They did not melt. All ner sins had come home to roost.

Dealing with the welcome to Bert Hinkler at Canberra, Mr Hughes said the picture shown that night was of nothing but American aeroplanes and American big guns; yet America never had a bigger gun while the war lasted. As far as her aeroplanes were concerned, they could have packed them under the platform on which he stood. Without a definitely patriotic Australian ideal, linked with the Empire, to start to kindle enthusiasm in our young men and women entering life, we must perish.