WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

Evening Star, Issue 21991, 29 March 1935, Page 8

WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

The Imperial Parliament, no doubt, would be relieved if spared the responsibility of mediating or adjudicating between Western Australia and the Commonwealth. It has enough to do in the matter of foreign relations and the Indian self-government question already. As a preliminary the right of Western Australia to petition has to be settled, for the Federal Government argues that under the Federal Constitution no such step is permissible. The Joint Select Committee of Lords and Commons has only to decide this point, and in arguing it alone on behalf of the would-be secessionist State, Professor Morgan’s difficulty is evidently in avoiding going into the merits and facts of the case itself. It is perhaps as well to review these, remembering that, but for Mr Serfdoms courteous refusal to throw in our lot with Australia, New Zealand would have participated in the Federation Referendum in 1900, and might just conceivably have voted “ Yes,” in which event our case would very probably have been on all fours with that of Western Australia to-day. It is free-trade —or at least a low tariff—for which Western Australia hankers to-day. At the time when Federation became operative (1901) the economic position of the Commonwealth was very similar to that of Western Australia to-day. Primary production was then greatly predominant over secondary. New r South Wales was free-trade, and only Victoria had gone in for manufacture on any scale. But within a generation all that has been changed. Under a high Commonwealth protectionist tariff, accentuated lately by the rate of exchange, there has been such industrial development in the cities that primary producers have had to take a back seat in the Federal chariot. But Western Australia remains a primary producing State par excellence —wool, wheat, beef cattle, timber, and gold chiefly. Sho is cut off from the manufacturing East by a desert, threaded by the East-West Transcontinental railway. By clapping on high Customs tariffs the Commonwealth has forced her to pay more for necessities and luxuries, and nourished uneconomic secondary industries in the East, while the West, remote and small in population, has little chance of starting industries of her own. Such an impartial body as the Commonwealth Tariff Board itself has put on record (in 1924) that “ Western Australia has to bear whatever burden may arise under the protectionist tariff without reaping any of the accompanying advantages.” Secession, if Western Australia got it, would be no solution of the trouble. A much better solution would be Commonwealth tariff revision downwards. Of this there are promising signs. The inclusion of Dr Earle Page and Country Party members in the Federal Ministry and the imminent success of the Country Party in the Victorian Parliament are signs of the times. The great anxiety shown by politicians over meat quotas in Britain is another omen of a desire for trade reciprocity, which must imply a lowering of tariff walls. Reverting to Western Australia, the voting showed two electors out of three in favour of secession. At the same time a Labour Government was returned, although Australian Labour’s traditional policy is high protection to safeguard high wages in manufacturing industry.