SECESSION MOVEMENT.

Evening Star, Issue 20509, 13 June 1930, Page 8

SECESSION MOVEMENT.

In theory the federation of the Australian States was the consummation of a great ideal. The result in practice has not been altogether satisfactory, for the community of interest among the different States has its limitations. Federal Labour legislation, particularly clauses in the Navigation Act and the tariff imposts, has provoked sharp differences ot opinion. From South Australia, Tasmania, and Western Australia protests come from time to time. In the last-named State public opinion has been so greatly roused that a campaign has been initiated, according to a cable message from Perth, for secession from the Commonwealth. The movement has' been speeded up by the introduction into the Federal Parliament of the Referendum Hills by the Sculiin Ministry, the effect 'of which, if carried, would mean further limiting the powers of the States. At the meeting in Perth when the secession movement was launched the Premier (Sir James Mitchell) said that federation was costing the State not less than £8,000,000 annually, which was a tremendous burden for 400,000 people: Grievances upon Which the secessionists are basing their arguments are the unfair incidence of the tariff upon the primary producing States and tho duplication of services and officials. One of the Western Australian members of the Federal House of Representatives, in discussing the position that had arisen, said that the great majority of the people in the West believed in federation as a principle, but the operation of Federal legislation had been so disastrous to them that unless reforms were granted in the near future tho growth of opinion was so strong that nothing would stop its demands for separation In the earliest days oi the State the discoveries of gold attracted the first settlers. Then large sheep and cattle stations were established, and, notwithstanding periodical set-backs from drought, yielded substantial profits to their owners, and the flocks and herds still show progressive increases.

In later years it is in wheat production that the greatest strides have been made. Despite intermittent adverse climatic and market conditions, the total area under crop has expanded in a remarkable way. Thirty years ago only 201,338 acres were put down in wheat, while the amount sown in the 1927-28 season was 3,720,100 acres. Western Australia is thus chiefly an agricultural and pastoral State, and the complaint is made that the people have to buy in the deafest market in the* world—that is, from tbe_- highly-pro-tected Eastern manufacturing States—and they have to sell their products in competition with the markets of the world overseas. Western Australia is not strong enough to establish its own secondary industries in competition with those so highly organised in Victoria and New South Wales. The coastal clauses of the Navigation Act impose a further heavy burden on the agriculturists of Western Australia, [n two directions, therefore, the Federal legislation acts oppressively on

them, making the cost of production out of proportion to the prices received for their goods. There is a belief in political quarters in Canberra that the Western Australians will not push their demands to an extreme point, but it has been declared that secession could be accomplished legally and constitutionally, and some of its prominent advocates express their readiness to go the whole way Probably, however, they would be satisfied to compromise. One recommendation in that direction, made by a Federal Royal Commission, was that the State should control its own Customs for twenty-five years.