LAND SETTLEMENT IN QUEENSLAND.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 12443, 5 March 1906, Page 6

LAND SETTLEMENT IN QUEENSLAND.

There is one feature in the efforts now being made to attract settlere to the Commonwealth, alluded to in our issue of Saturday, to which special reference may be made. At the present moment Queensland is displaying more activity m this direction than any other State in Australia. She is not only seeking immignants from the Old Country, but she is endeavouring, with considerable success, to draw more experienced settlers from her neighbours in tho Commonwealth. As a Sydney paper puts it, she is practically making a raid on the [Southern States. Queensland reprejsentatives have been appointed to Victoria and New South Wales, and an area of country for settlement has been placed at the disposal of each of them for the benefit of new settlers. Tho group system of settlement enables immigrants from other States to form Victorian, or New Sonth Wales communities, and this is said to have been a potent factor in inducing them to go to Queensland. _ One gathers that in some quarters this reservation of choice lands for outsiders has been resented by Queenslanders, end for this reason the group system is not applied indiscriminately, some areas being open to general competition. The great advantage that the arrival of southern settlers offers to Queensland is that they are en educational force; ac the Minister of Lands said recently, they bring new ideas end introduce new methods. On the other hand,, he recognises that the system has the great disadvantage so far as the Commonwealth is concerned that it does not increase, except perhaps to a small degree, the number of settlers in the country. "It is very like taking " money out of one pocket end putting "it into the other." This is why Mr

BeU is making strong efforts to secure immigrants from Great Britain, and k placing facilities at the disposal of possible settlers. They can, for instance, select their land at the Agent-General's office in London, and every man who pays his passage out lias £17 credited to him for every adult in his family towards the rent on purchase money of his selection. But the greatest inducement lies in the terms offered by the Go-

verament to an immigrant, whether British or Australian, who takes up an agricultural farm. If he pays the whole of the purchase money the Government pays him 3 per cent, on the sum for five years, w> long as he fulfils the ordinary settlement conditions, and if at the end of five years he is not satisfied with his land or his prospects, the Government will take over his selection as it stands and refund the purchase money less 21 per cent! This remarkable generosity is due, it appears, to the desire of the Government to assuage the fears of British settlers lest they should lose their money. The maximum area of an agricultural farm selection, it maybe added, is 1280 acres, and the minimum price is tun shillings per acre, payment being spread over twenty years, without interest. Is it any wonder that settlers are beginning to flow into Queensland, or that the energetic policy of its Minister for Lands, himself the son of a large landholder, is attracting the attention of the other States?