AUSTRALIA’S ORIGINS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 99, 29 March 1937, Page 12

AUSTRALIA’S ORIGINS.

LECTURE GIVEN IN LONDON. “A picture of a noble army of martyrs going to Australia as convicts will liot do,” said Professor G. V. Portus, of Adelaide, in discussing the origins of Australia in the first of the three Joseph Payne lectures at the University of London, at which Mr S. M. Bruco presided. His subject was, “Free, Compulsory and Secular: A Critical Estimate of Australian Education.” The professor said others exaggerated the importance of Australia’s convict foundation. “Pointing to Norman Brookes, Melba. Bruce, and Bradman, these others say that the fairest flowers spring from dunghills. There is no need to emphasise the convict element in Australia, since it is not there. The inrush of free settlers washed out the birtji-stain.” It was arguable whether the drift to the citv was deplorable, and they could not reverse the drift by being lugubrious about it. Paying a tribute to the devotion of Roman Catholics to the ideals of reli- ! gious education, he said that no other body could show devoted men and women giving their lives to educating children without reward or parents willing to pay fees for having their children educated when they could secure secular education free. “The only hope of reversing the secular education policy in Australia is a religious revival, of which I do not see °any signs,” Professor Portus concluded.