AUSTRALIA AND SECESSION

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22030, 9 February 1935, Page 17

AUSTRALIA AND SECESSION

Sir, —The Federal Government is obviously aware that the move for secession among the minor States of Australia is a definite danger and possibility, and is leaving no stone unturned to combat it. The press has announced that the Government hopes, by the expenditure of £18,700, to quieten the secessionists in West Australia, and to prevent the spread of the movement to the other States. The Government Printing Office has been busy prfnting and preparing 706,848 expensivelybound copies of_ the Government's " case," and these have been distributed in West Australia, South Australia and Tasmania. The underlying fear of secession is based, not upon economic grounds, but upon financial grounds. Secession is a challenge to the present centralised control of finance in the Commonwealth, for immediately any State seceded it would simultaneously and automatically acquire the right to determine its own financial system and policy. The credit monopoly knows this only too well, and hence the efforts to defeat any. move in that direction. L.H.