DOMINIONS COMMISSION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16499, 27 March 1917, Page 5

DOMINIONS COMMISSION.

FINAL BEOOMMENDAHONS. assistance; IN DEVELOPMENT * ■ A Permanent board. ■FASTER SHIPPING SERVICES. A. and N.Z. Cable. ! LONDON, March 25. ; The final and unanimous report of the Dominions Commission, covering five years' investigation, has been published. It states that the commission visited every capital and every State and province in the Dominions. It held 160 sittings and examined 860 witnesses. It acknowledges its • indebtedness for assistance to Mr. Knibbs, Commonwealth statistician, on tho Australian tour, and Mr. Malcolm Ross in New Zealand.

Reviewing the Dominions seriatim, the report inferentially favours assisting the development of the potentialities of Canada, South Africa, Australia, Now Zealand, and Newfoundland in the order named. The Australian interior, it says, is largely waterless and impossible ol settlement. Northern Queensland, the northern portion of West Australia, and the' Northern Territory have not proved suitable for a large white population, nevertheless there are enormous areas, mainly in the coastal belt, as healthy as any country in the world, favoured by a beautiful climate and sufficient rainfall. These areas are the most sparsely populated of any civilised country in the world. The report criticises the, undue aggregation of population in Australia in the towns. The wheat areas are enormous, but lack railways, .and the average acreage yield is 50 per cent, below Canada. The mineralogical potentialities are enormous, particularly in Queensland, which, many believe, will rank first of the States. The Britain of the South. Mineralogically, New Zealand is splendid, while from the point of view of agriculture it is another Britain in the Southern Seas. Social legislation and even distribution of wealth in New Zealand are probably more advanced than in any part of the Empire. The principal recommendation is the creation of a permanent Imperial Development Board'under the direction of a permanent Imperial Conference, comprising 12 members intimately acquainted with the Empire, seven representing" Britain, India, and the Crown colonies, and one each of the five Dominions, with headquarters in London. This commission should make frequent Empire peregrinations, and its main functions should. be to complete and continue the work begun by the commission in relation to the production and distribution of food and raw materials throughout the Empire, scientific research, the employment of Empire capital for the development of Empire resources, assistance within the Empire for steamships, cables,' and railways in so far as they are contributory to Imperial development; legislation affecting trade and the preparation of Imperial statistics.* The board should be purely advisory in its initial stages, and. must not encroach .on the political or administrative machinery of the self-governing Dominions. ' Its ' prin-. cipal duty should be to initiate or report on schemes remitted by the Imperial Conference for participation by the various Governments. r Shipping and Cables. The commission finds that interImperial communication demands vessels cf greater draught and length, necessitating the deepening of the harbours of the Suez, the Cape, and the, Canadian routes, notably Fremantle, ) Adelaide, : Melbourne, Lyttelton, and Port Chalmers. "'■"; The ".• drydocks in Australia and New Zealand are inadequate, except' in Sydney. j. The : shipping . services will require reviewing in '1920, when the Orient Company's contract expires, with a ' view :to securing 18-kiiot services and landing mails in Adelaide; in 25 days 14 hours by the Suez Canal route and 28 days via the Cape, and in New Zealand in 25 days by way. of Halifax and : Vancouver. ■ The subsidised services must submit a schedule of. .freights to the Governments to obviate differential .rates inimical to Imperial trade.■'..;/ , r '\ i; .'."■ : The report recommends the' creation ; of a central emigration board, .'under" : British Governmental direction, with;a; consultative board comprising the Dominions' re-, presentatives. .;. \, .■'".-',.. ■ -:--";".'.'V.

,It discountenances : ; the *;" emigration vof soldiers < without ; adequate capital ■-: and training, and urges' increased female emigration to redress . the balance- of the sexes. ■■' ' ";■'.'■':' ■" ;' s >"y/' "■"■'.' V';'" -.".. •-' '-

It recommends the acquisition ■;by the Government of the Atlantic cable arid : a land line from Nova Scotia, via Montreal, connecting with the Pacific,, and;the reduction of full rates to 2s.a word, deferred to Is, and week-end messages to 6d a word. The report says press rates should be correspondingly reduced) and assumes the abolition of the. Commonwealth's unjustifiable terminal: charge, of fivepence a word, i The- nationalisation of privately-owned cables, it says,; is becoming an urgent problem of statesmanship. The commission endorses Sir Joseph Ward's views oh this point, as expressed at the Imperial Conference of 1911.

Other recommendations are a fiveyearly census of the Empire, interImperial itinerant exhibitions, international exhibitions, unification ;of the legislation covering patents and trademarks and companies, modification of the double income tax, and a uniform Imperial decimal coinage and metric system of weights and measures.,