SETTLING THE BACKBLOCKS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 238, 5 October 1923, Page 4

SETTLING THE BACKBLOCKS.

j There has been so much talk of what ! ought to be done to encourage settleIment in the Australian backblocks and check the drift to the cities, that those who have followed Australian affairs will not be very hopeful of results from the outline of Government policy and resolutions of tho Nationalist Conference, which we publish to-day. Yet perhaps there is a definiteness about some Of these proposals that promises well. The Government talks of pushing railways into the backblocks before inviting people to settle there, and of remitting rent for five years if a settler makes Improvement to his land equal to the value of the rent. Such railway extension will be justified only if a determined effort is made to put settlers on the land, for, as tho "Insurance and Banking Record" said some months ago of Australian railways generally, "progress in settlement and in the numbers of the rural population during the last eight or ton yours has not been in proportion to the growth of the principal cities. Any further extension of railway construction requires to find justification in a more rapid increase in the development of tho resources of the country itself than has been the case of late years." Statistics are eloquent about the swollen state of the capitals. The figures at the end of 1922 gave the following percentages of the totals of the respective State populations:— Sydney 44.01 'Melbourne 61.35 Brisbane _>.1S Adelaide 52.0.1 Perth 47.16 Hobart M.91 Not one of the world's capitals listed for purposes of comparison in tho "Commonwealth Year Book" approaches the four highest of these Australian figures. Moreover, these percentages are increasing rapidly. As recently as 1015 Sydney's was less than 41, Melbourne's was less than 40, and Brisbane's less than 24. The 1921 figures showed that 43 per cent of the population of all Australia was metropolitan, and another 19 per cent urban in the provincial sense. The Nationalist Conference favours decentralisation of Government departments, the establishment of manufactures in country towns, and the cutting up of large estates. Unfortunately, it is much easier to pass resolutions than legislation; for one thing, the political and economic "pull" of a city like Sydney is enormous.