IMMIGRATION QUESTION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 1075, 23 July 1924, Page 10

IMMIGRATION QUESTION.

NOMINATION SYSTEM CRITICISED. LANDS AVAILABLE-FOR SETTLEMENT. Immigration was a question discussed l>v Mr W. J- Poison, Dominion president of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union when addressing the annual conference at Wellington yesterday. “The attitude of the authorities over the immigration question still leaves many of us cold. Other bodies have joined in the protest raised by this organisation a year ago against the slip-shod immigration policy of this Dominion. The nomination system has come in for fairly universal condemnation. Instances of its unsuitability, and of the unfortunate results of its operation, have come before us on more than one occasion. I am glad to see tliat we have successfully focussed attention on the group system, and that conferences of various bodies have endorsed that system, wlilie condemning the present policy of the Government. During the year we had a visit from an Imperial Immigration Commission, instructed by the Imperial authorities to survey the Dominions and report upon their suitability for immigration. The commission was more impressed with the wide empty spares of Australia, than with New Zealand, the members going so far as to say that wo had no land in New Zealand. No doubt the commission’s misconception was largely due to the fact that it was raced through the country at express speed and that it had no opportunity of examining our vacant, lands or of assessing their value for settlement. The commission spoke in the most glowing terms of this ‘glorious country,’ its magnificent climate and its fertile soil, but it seemed to doubt whether, possessing all these advantages, it could sustain any great increase in population. It seemed to mo that the dominating personality on the commission was a Labour member of Parliament who seized upon every circumstance, however trivial, to oppose immigration, or at all events immigration to New Zealand. I do not know what the policy of iho British Labour Party upon this important question may be. but 1 imagine that, it realises the advantages of a self-contained and self-sustain-ing Empire and that only colonial development with its consequent migration of population ran bring that about. During the recess we have published a great deal of informative literature about, this question and particularly about the various Australian schemes in order to stimulate interest amongst our own members. The question is of the greatest national importance. The president of the associated Chambers of Commerce. Mr W. H. Hudson, at the annual conference, [jointed out that in New Zealand less than one-seventh of tlie population were engaged in our primary industries and producing- 95 per cent of our wealth. Our commercial population, ho stated, in proportion to that engaged in production was, in comparison with that of Britain upon the same basis, two and a half times as numerous (i.e., 50 per cent as against 20 per cent), while our professional class was 73 per cent larger than theirs (i.e., 4.32 as against 2.5) In New Zealand the unoccupied or unclassified balance of population is 48 per cent of the whole, ns against 43 per cent in Britain, well over 10 per cent, said Mr Hudson, who concluded an interesting address by stating the arresting fact that in a community such as ours (in which we claim there are no idle rich, and pauperism should be unknown) but a fraction of our population produces the income of the remainder. “In addition to our partially settled land —land held in largo areas which is capable of sustaining ten limes tlio population—the Lands Department lias published a memorandum giving the following figures in regard to Crown lands available for settlement: Pumice lands North Island, 6,000.000 acres; irrigable lands Central Otago. 371,800 acres; gum bearing lands, 800,000 acres; total, 7,171,800 acres. This is ouo of the questions which no patriotic citizen can allow to be longer neglected. We must push on with immigration. It is not possible in this address to revierv any particular scheme but an opportunity will be given to members during this conference to discuss the whole question."