EMPIRE MIGRATION

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 195, 15 May 1936, Page 10

EMPIRE MIGRATION

The question of Empire migration has been given further prominence in speeches at the Royal Empire Society’s meeting in London, when the Premier of New South Wales, Mr. Stevens.was credited with having remarked in a circular memorandum that “this may be the last opportunity of building up a British Australia ’ This is another way of saying that if British people will not fill tip their vacant overseas spaces, others may question their right to “squat on land without using it. There is no difference between this argument and that upon which we ourselves have broken up large estates in our own country—we did that because people who wanted land were unable to obtain it. The logic is not changed by. putting it in an international perspective. In a letter to The Tinies in March last otir former Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe, asserted that no one who knew this country, its climate, and its untapped resources,, could put its ultimate maximum population at less than 15,000,000. “After five years’ close study of New Zealand’s natural resources, industries, international trade, and commercial potentialities,” he said, “I see no economic future for her unless she opens her arms (with all proper discrimination) to both human migrants and pedigree live stock. from the Motherland.” On Lord Bledisloe’s figures we should lie aiming at ten times our present population. Yet we are doing nothing about it. We shall be told, perhaps, that nothing can be done until the Imperial Conference next year. But there is yet no indication that we are even considering what our representatives will say at that conference. Is it not time that Parliament took this question seriously in hand? It is not a party question, but it is an urgent one.