SECESSION MOVES

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 221, 14 June 1930, Page 15

SECESSION MOVES

West Australia & Tasmania REPENT AT LEISURE Western Australian opinion toward Federation may be likened to that of a young woman who, in some postnuptial disillusionment, holds that she was hurried into marriage on a sentimental emotion, and without clearly knowing her own mind (states the “Sydney Morning Herald” in a review of the lately reported secessionist movement). It might be said further that she contemplates divorce, not yet with any definite intention, but as a practical relief ultimately available to her for a condition which has brought her little happiness. She is disposed to remain under the roof of her partner (the rest of Australia), if that partner will show her more consideration.

The parallel will supply for her critics in eastern Australia two definite truths about Western Australia’s present feelings. The largest State of the Commonwealth was definitely hurried into Federation, on a wave of sentiment, while still a little reluctant and jealous of her new freedom of independent adolescence. For it was only in late 1890, just eleven years before Federation, that Western Australia had been elevated from one of Her Majesty’s settlements to a self-govern-ing colony. The second parallel is that even now Western" Australia does not genuinely desire to separate, and contemplates separatibn more hi sorrow than in anger—that is to say, without armed insurrection. But she conceives herself (and with some cause) ill-treated, and denied her due right to the opportunities of self-expression which she thought she would retain (and this is plain to see); and the desii'e for separation must inevitably grow if her efforts to obtain fair treatment are continually rebuffed. Concessions Whittled. As late as the year 1900, in the preparations for the enactment of the Federal Constitution, Western Australia, under the late Lord Forrest (then Sir John Forrest) was alone among the Australian States holding out from the compact. The concessions she sought were whittled down finally to the one demand that for five years after the adoption of a Federal Customs tariff she should have the right to impose her own Customs duties on intercolonial and other imports. All that she could obtain from the Melbourne Convention was a clause (No. 95, in the Constitution) granting her a right to impose Customs duties, on decreasing scale, for five years on goods imported from other States of Australia; and during the passage of the Commonwealth Bill through the House of Commons the additional words, “if that State be an original State,” were inserted. Western Australia finally consented to hold a referendum of her own on urgent representations from Mr. Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, that she should consider whether she ought not in her own Interests to enter the Federation forthwith in order to secure the benefits of clause 95. Goldfields’ “Yes.” On July 31, 1900, the local referendum was held and was carried, against strong minorities in the metropolitan areas, and against a strong majority in the country electorates, by an overwhelming vote of “Yes” in the then populous goldfields which desired the east-west railway. The goldfields majority of 24,500 supplied by all save a few hundred the majority vote of Western Australia for Federation. That goldfields population has.now almost vanished; and it would probably be fair to say that the objections in the country, and the fairly even division of opinion in Perth and Fremantle, upon the merits of Federation, persist to this day. They are maintained by resentment against the inequitable burdens of the State under the Customs tariff and the Navigation Act, and by the general deafness to local grievances shown by the far-removed politicians in the. east. .>

These grievances were crystallised, during the inquiry of the Federal Royal Commission on Western Australian disabilities in 1925, into demands that the State should have power to regulate its own Customs duties for at least 25 years, that the Federal Arbitration Act should at least be revised to cover only industries truly Federal in character, that the coastal clauses In the Navigation Act should be repealed, and that Western Australia should have larger representation in the Federal Parliament. Definite evidence was adduced to show that efforts to establish local secondary industries in manufacture of jam, rope and twine, canvas goods, tinware, and boots, had been promptly killed by dumping from the eastern States, and that thereafter the imported price rose against the Western consumer.

The consequence is that there is little outlet for Western Australian development save on the land. Farming there, as everywhere in Australia, is becoming unprofitable under the high Customs tariff, and additionally in the West, by reason of high transportation freights from eastern States. The growing irritation fed by these discontents nourishes the agitation, always latent and periodically aroused, in favour of secession. The present incitement must be traced to 'the prohibitive new tariff and to tlie Federal Government’s proposal to attempt to acquire complete legislative powers, to the impoverishment of the State’s sovereignty.