ASIA’S MILLIONS NOW VERY NEAR TO AUSTRALIA

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22887, 5 March 1949, Page 3

ASIA’S MILLIONS NOW VERY NEAR TO AUSTRALIA

LONDON. There are 1.000,000,000 people within 24 hours’ flight of Australia and with jet-propulsion they will be closer still, says G. Ward Price in the Sunday Dispatch. Price, who has just returned to Britain after a tour of Australia says the Minister for Immigration, Mr. Calwell, told him this.

Mr. Cal well added: “The pressure on these dense populations’ living space is growing, while the north-west of Australia is almost empty.

“Japan will be a formidable, aggressive nation again in 25 years and Australia must have at least 20,000,000 people before it is strong enough to defend its independence.” Price added that until Pearl Harbour startled TTustralia from a long sleep, Australian trade unionists wanted labour to be scarce so that the unions could maintain demands for more wages and easier conditions: an influx of skilled workmen from Britain and other countries might diminish these advantages.

Price added '■■that watersiders still indulge in political prejudices: they refused to handle supplies for the Dutch in Indonesia. These tendencies, however, are abating, and Communist agitators who won key posts in the union are said to be losing thejr influence.

Even organised labour begins to realise that 7.500,000 Australians are not enough to hold this vast, rich, almost empty Tom Tiddler’s ground at a time when the white man is in retreat throughout Asia, leaving Australia as an island in an ocean of coloured races. Price says: “Are Singapore and Hongkong safe—with open rebellion around one, and the other confronted by the victorious Chinese Communist Army? This new world situation is causing Australia grave concern. Britons, Australians and New Zealanders must work closely together if these two Dominions on the far side of the earth are to remain under the flag of which they are so proud today.”