AUSTRALIAN SUMMARY.

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 98, 22 October 1904, Page 9

AUSTRALIAN SUMMARY.

1 (For the week ending Saturday last.) THE NO-CONFIDENCE MOTION. After Mr. Cameron's" speech of the previous week the result of the division on Mr. Watson's no-confidence motion in Mr. Reid's Federal Government was a foregone conclusion. The Government defeated the motion by two votes in a full Hoiwe, after four weeks bad been spent in debating a barren issue. The Age, in commenting on the position, ,gays that it knows as a. matter of fact tliat tha Federal Parliament had no confidence in the Reid Government. Even Mr. Deakin, who is going to support that Government, said that there was no fusion of parties in the Houfe, but only confusion ; that the Government has no policy similar to that which he Appealed to the country ; and that consequently no progress is. being made in the lines promised to the electors. Therefore it' is quite deal Mr. Deakin has little more confidence in. the Government than Mr.' Watson has. Referring to what it terms the farcical character of the debate, the same' paper says that time was when members adJiessed the House to influence' the divisions lists. Now their main object is to move the current opinion, among tke electors. Party government alone was responsible for the whole waste of time, and it is difficult to see how it could be obviated under that system. The Argus says that the division is a. complete answer to all the weak and waspish complaints about the Watson Ministry having been diemissed by a tritk, got rid of on. «■ side issue, denied fair play. Every member who voted against the Watson. Ministry is of the same opinion still. The same paper considers that though a, majority of two is not large it ougnt to prove workable. As a result of the division a disaster had been averted from the country. A general .election, taken in the midst of harvest, disturbing business, costing £50,000, and involving probably another cost of £50,000 in a separate Senate election in 1906, would have been nothing short of disaster. PREFERENTIAL TRADE. Speaking at a banquet to the Mayor of Scaisdalo (Victoria), 'Mr. Deakin touched on the auestiou of preferential trade. He said that he hoped that they were watching through the cablograins the progress of the conflict in Great Britain between the two parties that were playing battledore and shuttlecock with Australian opinion, he would not say Australian interests. He was sorry to find men as, brilliant and able as Lord Rosebery and Mr. Asquith, one of the hopes of tne Liberal Party in Great Britain, taking up the attitude they were at present assuming. He regretted to see that from Mi*. Asquith's lips they had' ai shower of adjectives applied to the Ministerial proposal which Mr. Balfour had recently made for calling a. conference which sould be representative of the •Empire to consider the possibilities of preferential trade between its parts. That proposal of preferential trade was one of the greatest ever launched. Great Britain spent . £800,000,000 a year outside the Empire in purchasing goods from foreigners. Was it not possible without any loss or sacrifice of a eerious character to have a considerable part of that sum spent inside of the Empire instead of outside; spent with our own people, settling ou'* own lands, increasing their production, and building up our own Empire, instead of building up rival, and perhaps hostile "'States? He favoured the holding of a conference in London to discuss this question. • THE VICTORIAN BUDGET. The first Financial Statement delivered by Mr. >Bent was robbed of much of the interest usually centred in the Budget by the absence of any declaration of policy, the threat of taxation or retrenchment, or the announcement of ambitious schemes of expenditure calculated to silence the clamour of unemployed disconcontent, or soothe the local patrioteim which is ever complacent towards a Ministry so long as the latter is the benevolent donor of public works. The largesse j to be distributed by the Treasurer in the way of public improvements, the concessions in the matter of taxation, and the I additional burdens to be imposed in the heavier licensing fees, taxes on clubs and demands for charitable support had already been announced, and the Budget, therefore, resolved itself into a mere etatemeut of the financial position. The revenue altogether had been £7,508,250, arid the expenditure £6, 914,993, leaving a surplus of £593,257. In dealing with railway finance, Mr. Bent discovered that ] in place of the £500 odd surplus claimed by the Railway Commissioners, the railways had an actual surplus of £11,049, The annual pension bill amounts to £552,121— £346,928 being the pension bill of the pubiic service, and £205,183 pen sions for the aged poor. The total recorded above was £10,000 less than the amount paid in 1903, and there ia the prospect that the pension account will be £13,000 less in the coming year. With regard to the future, the Treasurer expects a revenue this year of £7,219,370, or £94,000 less than last year. The estimated expenditure is £7,056,423, so that there is an anticipated surplus of £162,947. These are the figures supplied to Mr. Bent, and they are based on the realisation of a harvest equal to that of last season. He himself did not take such a rosy view of the situation. He was told authoritatively that the grain harvest would not exceed 15,000,000 bushels, instead of 26,000,000, and if this forecast should prove correct the estimated surplus would have to be curtailed by £100,000.