IDLE HANDS

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume VLI, Issue 3420, 16 December 1935, Page 5

IDLE HANDS

SETTLING AUSTRALIA The Commonwealth Government of Australia has offered extensive concessions in Northern Australia to companies or others prepared to enter upon schemes of development. Certain offers have been received, but those who have made them have asked for Government financing, from sums of a million pounds upwards. There is a general feeling that applicants should do the greater part of their own financing. Australia has a vast area of unproductive country upon which it has spent vast sums in the hope of bringing it under settlement. Occasionally statements are made abroad suggesting that the Australian people are acting as “dogs in the manger,” retaining for themselves great fertile areas which they do not, and cannot, use. Nothing could be further from the truth. The losses made by Governments in trying to settle people on comparatively barren country with slight irregular rainfall, have been a serious factor in the accumulation of the national debt.

The “vast empty spaces,” where only a’ few cattle-men and mining prospectors now endure the rigors of life, are often mentioned as a reason why there should be an extensive system of assisted immigration from Europe. When the last immigration policy was in progress a number of British immigrants were placed upon the northern lands of the compact, comparatively welldeveloped State of Victoria. Some of them were given individual advances ranging from £2OO, but they failed, and nearly £400,000 was paid to them by the State Government by way of compensation. City dwellers from tiic old world generally make poor pioneers. At present the Victorian Government is removing hundreds of unsuccessful settiers from the NorthWestern Malee, where wheat fields are going back to grazing. In this case, the individual advances made to the settlers have ranged up to £6OOO. On one area there were 200 settlers who had received from £l5OO to £3OOO apiece, and who were finally given £lOO apiece by the Government to allow them to make a fresh start somewhere else. Australia is a fertile prosperous country in the coastal districts, and for a few hundred miles inland. The great areas of Central and Northern Australia are of another and much poorer quality. Success there can only be attained by a heavy capital expenditure. In any case presentday settlement there of “a vast peasant population” is not practicable. Land of Opportunity Australia welcomes, and will assist, enterprise from outside. It also extends a welcome to all white immigrants who can fend for themeslves. For these the Commonwealth is a land of opportunity.