GOVERNMENT IN A QUANDARY

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 49, 26 February 1918, Page 3

GOVERNMENT IN A QUANDARY

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDtNT.)

SYDNEY, ISth February.

The bitterest critics of the extremist Government of Queensland —and they are very many and very bitter—have to acknowledge that it has at least given the people of the northern State cheap meat. There are State butcher shops in Queensland, and the Government insists on paying only a moderate price for its stock, and retailing tho meat at corresponding rates, thus controlling the whole stock and meat market. The big prices which the world is paying for meat to-day can only be enjoyed by the Queensland pastoralist and exporter after the local needs have been supplied.

The ruthlessness with which the Government controls the meat market, however, threatened to land it in a peculiar difficulty the other day. When, during the recent floods, one of the Ministers arrived in Rockhampton he found the town at the point of sufferhig a meat famine. He was struck by the fact that, while the population, almost isolated, wailed for meat, stock of all descriptions was being swept down the flooded river, right through the town. He at once gavo orders that all such stock as could possibly be rescued be commandeered, slaughtered, and sold in 'tlje State butchers' shops, and that, where the owners of the stock could be discovered, they were to be compensated. Several owners said they wanted £10 per head for their cattle. The Minister said that this was ridiculous The owners said that if their price was not paid, they would be compelled to take drastic action^ even to the extent of issuing warrants and searching the State shops.

Possibly the prospect of the State having to face a charge of having beef or hides in its possession reasonably supposed to have been stolen proved too much for the Minister, for eventually he compromised and agreed to pay £9 per head for all stock taken from the river and slaughtered; Several owners of cattle complained that their animals, which had managed to escape from the flood, and were safe in shallow water, were seized by the State's men and taken away and slaughtered, although they could quite as readily have been allowed to remain where they were until their owners came for them.