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Press, Volume LX, Issue 18182, 19 September 1924, Page 8

To Make Australia White. A few days ago we pointed out how the sheer weight of her public debt was forcing Australia to face the need fov a national and efficiont immigration policy. But there is another and more commonly recognised reason why Australia must speed up the settlement of her vast country. Australia at present is not safe. She has only sis million inhabitants, and knows that at least twenty millions aro necessary to ensure the integrity of her territory against future possibilities. And New Zoiiland is very much concerned in the successful solution of a problem which determines who will be our neighbours on tho other side of the Tasman. There is peculiar interest for tho Dominion, therefore, in a recent plan to solve it by a policy of immigration, not in hundreds or scores, or less, but itx thousands and ultimately in millions. The plan, was described to the New South Wales branch of the Eoyal Colonial Institute by Major-General W. L'Estrange Barnes, and is fully detailed in the latest issue of the Institute's journal, "United Empire." Settlement would proceed in communities of 14,000 or more, so that the requisite balance between primary and secondary industry might bo maintained and the benefit of numbers be obtained in social life. Volunteers would bo enrolled under agreement for three years, during which time ' they would barter their labour in return for transportation, clothing, feeding, instruction, medical attention, and, on completion of their contract, freehold land and' a house. In addition, each trainee would receive three shillings a day during his service, and on completing it a bonus of £ 100. The settlers themselves would do tho roading, clearing, and building. General Eames estimates that in tho third year -160,000 trainees could be handled, and from the eighth year onwards two million. The cost he sets out at £lOls for each settler, equal to about £340 a year for three years. Deducting the value of . the wealth produced by trainees during the term, and adding the cost of material for public works and services, he arrives at £327 as tho real cost of settlement per man. This estimate, if fuller investigation proved it to be correct, would compare very favourably with the official estimate of £3OO as the value to the Commonwealth of each trained worker on a four-to-the-family basis. General Eames presupposes intelligent administration by tho Federal Government, which is a good deal to expect of any bureaucratic administration, and postulates the development by the separate States of something more like a nar tional outlook than they now display. It presupposes also a faculty for cooperation which it is not certain that a highly individual people like our own possess. But his plan is at any rate worth investigation. There is sound sense, too, in his reference to the freehold tenure: "Given freeholds "we can offer a man a secure home for "himself and his children, but without "freeholds we can promise only a temporary reward for hia labour. We "want permanent settlors, and per"manency presupposes security. It "was tho freehold that settled the "United States; it is the freehold that "is settling Canada, and it is on freeholds that we must rely for our future "prosperity."