PASTORAL INDUSTRY

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 144, 15 December 1927, Page 6

PASTORAL INDUSTRY

CUTTING UP AUSTRALIAN

ESTAtES

EFFECT ON WOOL QUALITY.

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, 9th December. Much concern has been caused among Australian pastoraliits by repeated criticism from wool-buyers, chiefly British, of the deterioration in the fine quality of Australian wool. They have replied that they are now growing wool which pays them best, wool which they admit is not as fine as clips of former years, but enables them to secure a weightier return from sheep, which are hardier and better meat-producers than the old, true-blue merino, with extremely fine wool. But one admitted cause of the production of a coarser clip is the cutting-up of the huge sheep stations, in New South Wales and Victoria for closer settlement purposes. ' The dozens of small sheep-owners who have taken the place of one owner of a large rnn cannot afford to pay the prices for the expensive fine wool merino rams. , ' ■ _

Queensland has been the home 6t fine wool during recent years, chiefly because its huge stations have escaped the touch of the closer settlement export. But if proposals introduced into the State. Parliament by the Labour Government in that State are put into effect, Queensland will-probably follow in the, footsteps of its sister States.' The promotion of closer settlement, the encouragement of the pastoral industry generally, and the extension of relief to settlers affected by drought are the declared objects of this measure, the Land Act Amendment Bill. The Bill more or less embodies the recommendations of a Land Advisory Board, with the exception of the suggested extension of one-third of pastoral lands to pastoral leases, which were declared by; the board to be essential. The' Government, however, holds that the interests of closer settlement are paramount, and has exhausted every effort to promote those interests. It is opposed, to the locking-up of large areas of pastoral country. ' .

In a review of the Bill, a leading Brisbane newspaper said: "The Gov« ernment has declined, even in, the faca of the evidence of the anaemic state ot the pastoral industry, reeling from the effects of one of the greatest droughts in Queensland's history, to abandon its policy of non-extension of pastoral leases. There is no redress for pastoral, ists in the Bill. , Concessions are to ba afforded the grazing industry, but tfcqr are at the mercy of the Minister, ani. the words, 'subject to the absolute discretion of the Minister,' are an eft-re-curring phrase in a Bill of copious dimensions."

Between 1926 ana 1932 the leases oft 478 pastoral holdings in- Queensland, aggregating more than.3l,ooo,ooo' awes of Crown land,s, will mature. .Last year the area affected was 3]584,00(> acres, and this year it will be 6,200,000 acres. There is now provision in-the. leases for renewals, and a large see*' tion of the State's principal industry, wool-growing, is therefore at the mercy, of a Labour Administration. Tha whole of the properties will thus be subdivided for closer settlement as they; become available. The effect ia.yedrs to come, according to men cognisant of pastoral conditions, will be a lessened production of wool, which will be of an inferior type to that now produced.