AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22004, 30 January 1937, Page 12

AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

* CO-OPERATION URGED

AGRICULTURE AND TOURIST

attractions

“New Zealand has a wonderful future ahead of her; her methods of rotational grazing are outstanding; very little is done along these lines in Victoria,” said the Hon. H. J. Hyland, Assistant-Minister for Agriculture in Victoria, to a reporter yesterday. Mr Hyland, who attended the science congress at Auckland, has been making a tour oi the Dominion inspecting pasture lands, and studying research work. Such work, he said, had been making rapid strides in New Zealand. The staff officers were men of outstanding ability, who had a thorough knowledge of their work and could advise the farming community what was necessary. Conditions for the farmer, he said, were improving all over the world, but with higher wages and increased costs it was very necessary that science should come to their assistance. In Australia and New Zealand business would stagnate without farming prosperity. There should, he thought, be more frequent interchange of visits between the two countries of Ministers and heads of departments so that more could be learned about agriculture and other matters such as road construction. Australia had much to learn from New Zealand and New Zealand from Australia.

jßoads Highly Praised

Mr' Hyland was very favourably impressed with the condition of the roads in New Zealand, which would be better still, he thought, now that the Government had taken over 4000 miles more of reading to maintain. New Zealand was in a more favourable position than Victoria, which had about the same area and population. The Federal Government there took the customs duties and roads had to be mainly maintained by motor taxation. Victoria, he said, had similar problems to those of New Zealand in the elimination of weed pests. The Government had spent £ 200,000 to eliminate ragwort in the last 18 months. The Government here was also tackling the problerti in a wonderful manner.

Of the recent legislation Mr Hyland said that the Government seemed to be making a wonderful job. Some of it was very good, but it was for New Zealanders themselves to decide whether it would be ultimately beneficial. The Government in Victoria was in a very different position. The Country Party was in power, and the city of Melbourne, with 56 per cent, of the population, had not a single representative in the governing party. Mr Hyland spoke very highly of the tourist attractions of the Dominion, referring particularly to the fishing and deer-shooting at Lake Wanaka.

“Ambassadors for New Zealand”

Every tourist goes back to Australia as an ambassador for New Zealand,” he said “If they are all treated as well as we have been the Dominion can be sure of attracting many more tourists. I see that there were two and a half times as many tourists from Australia last December as the previous December, and there is no reason why these figures should not be doubled or trebled. The increase has taken nlace even with the epidemic of infantile paralysis.” Mr Hyland said that he could only wish that even some of the smaller mountain peaks in New Zealand could be transported to Victoria, as well as some of the six-pound trout which were caught in Lake Wanaka. It was amazing, too, to hear that 22.000 deer were culled out last year, as in Australia they were protected. If Australians knew what was offered in New Zealand they would come over in larger numbers. Another feature of New Zealand noticed by Mr Hyland was the large number of substantial towns apart from the main centres.

“The two countries have very much in common.” he said, “especially in the marketing of produce overseas. The Awatea has reduced the journey between Australia and New Zealand to two and a half days, and it takes about as long to get from Melbourne to Brisbane as from Wellington to Sydney. The two countries should co-operate more closely for their own benefit.”