PROTECTION IN AUSTRALIA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 11543, 30 November 1900, Page 4

PROTECTION IN AUSTRALIA.

We have had repeated occasion to refer to a phenomenon which has been so marked as to create universal attention—the ebb of the unreasonable craving for indefensibly high tariffs. This is noticeable in the platform put forward by the Protectionist party in Australia, preparatory to the Federal elections. Its directors evidently realise that "protection" has ceased to be a word to conjure by, and have been compelled to strengthen it by associating it with popular planks which have really nothing whatever

to do with the fiscal issue. Even the Protection they advocate is now modestly draped as " discriminatory," and preference in favour of Britain is conceded. We cannot expect that the new Commonwealth will declare its ports "free," any more than it was expected that Canada would when Sir Wilfrid Laurier led the old freetrade party of the Dominion back to power—for longestablished -conditions, even when theoretically injurious, cannot be roughly disturbed, and with the exception of New South Wales, every Australian colony has been committed to Protection. But we are convinced that the fiscal policy of Australia will be very much milder and more " discriminatory" than it would have been fifteen years ago, when only the genius of Sir Henry Parkes foiled the triumph of high tariff in New South Wales itself;' and that it will have a stronglymarked trend towards that free exf chancre within the Empire to whicfc Sir Wilfrid Laurier has given such at impetus bj the Canadian preferential tariff. We may reasonably anticipate that the comparatively near future will see freetrade throughout the Empire, at least in the staple necessaries of life.