THE TRUTH ABOUT AUSTRALIA

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1732, 10 May 1905, Page 60

THE TRUTH ABOUT AUSTRALIA

in reply to a. writer (“Anti-Socialist") in the London “Daily Mail" who reiterated the lie that the Australian colonies had been ruined by the socialistic tendency of the legislation, Mr Kandolf Bedford, the brilliant litterateur, wrote in reply — “Australia is not m want of farming population because earner generat ons of 'lories seemed and closed *arge areas of the best land, and now the labour narties are trying to get it back by comptnsory re-purchase. When the £35,000,000 of manufactures we import annually are made locally we will want immigration, but of the right sort, wh.ch will be the kind of artisan that now leaves England for the highly protected United btates. The snort distance and cheap fares to Canada and the United states attract immigration thereto more than to Australia. This will give us the better quality of immigrant once we have establ shed prohibitive protection to nnd him occupation when he lands. Our principal trouble is tnat our tttate parliaments are now infested by a low mass of politician who is jealous of the greater popularity of the Commonwealth Parliament, and who is ready to cry “stinking fish" if by do ng so he can revile tne one party that stands for an Australian national sentiment. Our .back country naa been ravaged by drought, and will be always so, but legislation against overstocking of leasehold land will minimise the effects; and if Australia’s experience is a cycle of drought, bush fire, and flood, that is always followed by years of plenty such as no other country knows. Thousands of small farmers have not gone to the wall. They are oppressed by heavy rents to land-grabbers, and then they whine to the Government for the socialism they fatten on, and love to call by any other name. It is the landed class that has spent most of Australia’s borrowings—the bulk of the people who live in the cities have had little of it. The country is the cormorant. The cost of farm labour is almost as low as in England, the hours of work are from dawn to dark and later, the taxation is the lowest in the world, and the land pays next to nothing of it. The railway freights have been so reduced on the country lines, and for the landed classes, that tiie railways do not pay; the city and suburban fares are correspondingly increased for the workman, who has no property, and, until recently, had little voice m government. The population is not ‘leaving for Canada, Argentina, New Hebrides, and South Africa,’ and never did. A few hundred people went to South Africa, and returned on finding it a yellow man’s country. But there has been a continuous emigration to New Zealand —the most prosperous State in Australasia, and the most soeialistically governed in the world."