Grey River Argus TUESDAY, January 15th., 1929. THE CITY OCTOPUS.

Grey River Argus, 15 January 1929, Page 4

Grey River Argus TUESDAY, January 15th., 1929. THE CITY OCTOPUS.

A quartette of British capitalists, after touring Australia, at the invitation of the Government, have presented it with what is called, after the leading visitor, the Duckham report. This, though on a larger scale, is something like the report which this country obtained from British Commissioners on its railways, and is of questionable value, but it contains one very obvious item, a recommendation for decentralisation. The New South Wales farmers are making this the text for an overdue agitation against the domination of the city over the country. They demand a couple more ports to ship their produce. If ever a country has been kept back by concentration of population and trade, it is Australia. Admittedly the geographical nature of the island continent has conduced to this, but today everything in the way of trade radiates to a few big cities, and especially to Sydney. Labour men for a quarter of a century have been iraising a protest against the lop-sided development going on. The wealthy elements are wedded to the city, and business has been focussed there in a most uneconomical manner. It may be remarked in passing that the Wellington Harbour Board is at present agitating to concentrate at its port the shipping done from smaller ports in the North Island, on the score that it has provided the best wharves at great cost, but it would be a mistake for New Zealand to follow an inch in the footsteps of New South Wales, even though our long coast line is in itself a guarantee against absolute concentration such as that at Sydney. The New South Wales farmers point out that all their produce has to be railed Sydney-wards at great cost, whereas a port to the north and another to the south of Port Jackson would afford vastly cheaper means of transport. It is no wonder the lands out-back remain undeveloped, holdings colossal, and population sparse, when even the wage-earners are induced to flock into congested areas because industry is so largely concentrated there, as well as finance, trading, transport and patronage. The result is that a majority of the people are strangers to their own native land, and familiar only with the metropolitan conditions, which tend to a dead and uninspiring uniformity. The' reason why Europeans are the ones who do best outback is that they are not vitiated by an urban environment. In the natural course of events, the land will largely tend to belong to any but the descendants of Australian pioneers. The city type prefers laughing over such pages as those of Steele Rudd, to facing the life over which “Mum” and “Dad” made something of a conquest. It has taken the rural people a long time to discover that Sydney and its like has been bleeding the country districts of the capital needed for progress. The fight over the Federal capital site was due to city rivalry, but it is as well that it has been located in what is still a country area. No State three times as large as New Zealand ought to have two out of every three of its people in one centre. In this respect, Sydney is exactly a representation of an octopus in New South Wales. Whatever half-baked notions are included in the Duckham Report, and there are many, it certainly is on very safe ground when it re-echoes the many warnings which for over a quarter of a century have been uttered _by Australians themselves against the city octopus.