AUSTRALIA'S POPULATION

Evening Star, Issue 25004, 25 October 1943, Page 2

AUSTRALIA'S POPULATION

FILLING EMPTY SPACES FOREIGN COLONIES OPPOSED (N.Z.P.A, Special Aust, Correspondent) SYDNEY, October 24. The report that the Australian Government will settle refugee Jews in a colony in the East Kimberley area of Western Australia is unfounded. This refutation has been made in official Government circles, although the Prime Minister, Mr J. Curtin, has declined to comment. In New York on Friday, the president of the Free Land League for Jewish Colonisation, Dr Steinberg, said that the Australian Government had approved of the league's proposal to settle 25,000 Jewish refugee families under a scheme financed by £12,000,000 of foreign capital. _ _ Strenuous opposition to this scheme has been voiced by a spokesman of the Australian Natives' Association, who declared that the establishment of " A Little- Europe" in the North-west could be calamitous. ' Foreign countries, such as "The Little Italys " of north Queensland, have created serious problems during the war, and political commentators believe that Federal Ministers would not sanction any similar schemes of colonisation.

" We must have post-war migration, for wo cannot hope to hold Australia with 7,000,000 people, but the formation of foreign colonies is the worst type of migration," said the Natives' Association spokesman. " Whether they be Jews or Gentiles, it will be a danger and a hindrance to Australia if they are settled in communities. The Government should colonise our empty spaces by assisting Australian families to establish themselves there . under good economic conditions. To these Austra-lian-founded colonies European migrants could be added in circumstances which will make it imperative that they assimilate the Australian outlook instead of retaining the mode of living of their native lands." [An earlier message stated that a post-war plan for the colonisation of 7,000,000 acres of the East Kimberley region of Western Australia by rofugee Jews had been approved in principle by the Australian Government, according to Dr Steinberg, president of the League for Jewish Territorial Colonisation. Dr Steinberg said that the plan was considered mutually beneficial, giving homeless Jews a place to settle and partly answering the Australian problem of a shrinking population.]