AUSTRALIA TODAY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 64, 13 September 1937, Page 4

AUSTRALIA TODAY

LINKS WITH AMERICA

LANDS HAVE BEEN MUCH IN COMMON

SOUTHERN HANDICAPS

The United States and Australia, with roughly the same area of territory, are both continental in scope, with all the political, economic, and social problems that come to a Federal system of government, writes R. L. Curthoys from Melbourne to the "New York Times." But in place of the Mississippi Valley and the Middle West, Australia has a great arid, almost uninhabited interior, with resources too scanty to be the basis of an almost selfsufficient economy such as that of the United States.

Australia's population of some 6,750,000 lives chiefly in the fertile coastal fringe of the east and southeast littorals. As the pioneers of the United States pushed from east to west' new riches continuously revealed themselves. For the Australian pioneer, making his way from the coast to the interior, westward and northward, the prospect becomes ever less inviting and life ever more arduous.

Australia's "vast empty spaces" have ■been talked of and written of so often that they have, acquired an utterly fictitious significance. Numerous diagrams show groups of European countries superimposed upon the map of Australia as if to suggest that Australia could readily accommodate the population of a large part of Western Europe. Similarly fallacious comparisons have been drawn between Australia and the United States. While ' the areas of the two countries are alike, the population of the United States is about twenty times as great, and this Tatio fairly illustrates their comparative natural wealth.. For practical purposes, of the 8,000,000 square miles of Australia , about 1,250,000 are desert. There is 'only one river system of any magnitude—that of the Murray and its tributaries, in the south-east, which form the "keystone of a great irrigation scheme still in process of completion, that ■will lend an immense stimulus tc the growing of drying and citrus fruits and the raising of fat lambs and to other primary production. MORE THAN HALF IN TOWNS. The towns and cities of the Commonwealth contain about three-fifths of its population. Sydney and Melbourne have more than 1,000,000 each; yet in the far ' north, separated by narrow seas from the teeming millions of Asia, are only a few thousand white people. If the continent as a whole is not rich, the good things of the coastal regions are ample to provide, for the people of the great cities a standard of comfort which is bettered in few other countries in the world. Food supplies are cheap and ample. He who wishes it may possess his own house, standing in its own garden—there are numerous agencies, Federal and State, facilitating instalment purchase of homes. And with working hours averaging only forty-four a week, there is more than ordinary leisure. Blue skies and golden sunshine almost ■ incessantly call the people to open-air . pleasures—to the surfing ' beaches of the Pacific, to cricket, tennis, football and golf, and; above all, ■to the racecourse. Horse-racing has assumed the dimensions faf an industry, and there are also trotting and dog-racing, all of them attended' by betting,'both with bookmakers and through the totalisator. The.spirit of Australia is a'spirit of easy optimism^ of willingness "to take a chance," so widely exemplified in the passion for betting on the" racecourse, of rather rough and ready political improvisation. The critical observer .detects, too, a note of selfsatisfaction and complacency, the product of physical and intellectual isolation. : ' . ' CANNOT BE BRIDGED. The.gulf .between Australia and the rest of the world cannot wholly be bridged by reading; and even if it could, the people are not studious. They have been too busy developing the country to produce a culture of their own (and the measure of achievement in little more than a century excites the admiration and wonderment of visitors from older countries) and so much of their spontaneous activity has been given to the pursuit of pleasure. An American expert who lately made a survey of the public libraries was justly scathing, and private libraries of any magnitude are rare. 0 Yet it is not wise for the visitor to • tell Australians that not everything in their garden is lovely. If external opinion does not minister to Aus- . tralian pride, it is liable to be rudely ; snubbed. The people believe that their country bulks much more largely in the world's eye than it does; and the chief value to a young Australian of travel in the older world outside is that it helps him to place his country 1 and its achievements in true perspec- . tive. The Commonwealth is through the worst of its depression, having reduced unemployment from as much as ■30 per cent, in the depth of the economic crisis to less than 10 per cent. . today. Stanley Bruce used to say, , when Prime Minister, that Australia's 1 chief needs were men, money, and markets; and that is no less true today. THE LINK WITH COSTS. Markets depend upon reduced costs of production in Australia and upon the weakening of economic nationalism, especially in those European countries which before the war were substantial consumers of Australian wool, wheat, meat, and fruit. It is becoming ever more clear that something must be done about costs of production. ' Experts have estimated that, allowing for her limited resources in arable land, the Commonwealth should ultimately accommodate a population of from 20,000,000 to 30,000,000. If there is a limit to the area of firstclass farming land, it must be conceded that inadequate use is being made of it. Science must be summoned more freely to the aid of primary prediction to facilitate closer settlement. The taxpayer has paid so dearly in the last twenty years for attempts to promote the settlement of agricultural land' by large-scale importation of people from Great Britain than popular feeling against the resumption of such measures is widespread. There is great difficulty in procuring the right type of immigrant to wrestle with the peculiar problems of the Australian environment. Immigration oi lads for training for farm work has been the most satisfactory- Land settlement is the function of-the State Governments, and since 1921 the Slate of Western Australia alone has spent the equivalent of £8,000,000 in establishing fewer than 2,000 settlers oil farms, the low-productive value of which has presented tremendous difficulties. MOSTLY BRITISH. Yet everything points to the need for an active immigration policy. During the last six years there has been a total loss of population by emigration of 28,000. There are those who feel strongly that the admixture of foreigners with an Australian stock which is about 98 per cent. British in origin would be all' to the good. Italians have made a specially, ynlu-

able contribution o the development of the sugar-cane industry in sub-tropical Queensland and there are strong communities of German stock in the wheat lands of Victoria and the viticultural areas of South Australia.

But the desire to keep Australia predominantly British is deep-seated, and the white Australia policy, by which people of colour are rigidly excluded, is a passionate creed of all political parties. This fastidious outlook necessarily implies slow progress in populating the continent, but t'ne question continually arises whether a leisurely pace can with safety be sustained.

It is the trade unions, whose political Labour Party is at present governing three of the six States—Queensland, Western Australia, and Tasmania —that must stoutly resist governmental encouragement of immigration. Arbitration Courts and wage boards have set up high wage levels, delimiting hours and prescribing working conditions in meticulous detail: a Tariff Board recommends to Parliament duties based upon costs of production in which the awards of the Courts and the boards are a large factor; and there is periodical adjustment of the basic or living wage to the cost of living, computed by the Commonwealth Statistician. Within this highly-protected economy the Australian trade unionist suspiciously regards the newcomer as the enemy of his cherished Australian standards. HOME PRICE FIXED. The Arbitration Court and the tariff explain, too, the system of controlled marketing whereby, a home consumption price is fixed for commodities such as butter, dried fruit, and flour, in order that the producer, living also in the highly-protected economy, which forces up prices of all his requirements, may be compensated for the sale of his export surplus overseas at a lower figure.

Again and again one encounters parallels in the problems of America and Australia. The United States is wrestling with the problem of erosion of her agricultural lands by wind and water. So, too, is Australia. Watersheds have been denuded of their forest cover and scrub has been torn from the plains, without thought of the need for windbreaks; and that most appalling of all introduced pests in Australia, the rabbit, has aggravated the.mischief wrought by man.