RACIAL ASPECT OF FEDERATION.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4290, 25 February 1901, Page 4

RACIAL ASPECT OF FEDERATION.

There islau aspect of tho federation question which lias been touched upon but lightly in tho evidence submitted to the Commissioners. Wc have the boot manufacturer. determining that federation with Australia on any terms would ruin his business, and generally all industrial workers are opposed to union with the Commonwealth, because it would bring them into keen competition with the poorer paid workman in Australia, and thereby meaiace the happier and healthier conditions that prevail here. It would seem from the evidence already offered that if a plebiscite! were taken of the people of this country, at least ninety per cent, of them would be opposed to joining me Commonwealth. These trade considerations, affecting white workers under different conditions, are patent, they are of immediate concern, and will practically determine the fate of federation in New Zealand. But the racial aspect of the question ought also to be discussed. Australia may be divided into two parts, temperate cr semi-tropical and tropical. It is a necessary part of future development that the large and richly-endowed areas in the North shall be brought under profitable cultivation, and to that end it is necessary that coloured labour should be employed. Now, in the South, there is a cry for a “White Australia,” and the Federal Premier has pledged himself to support that view. The sugar-growers of Queensland realise that this agitation threatens the stability of .their industry. Even, in the northern portions of New South Wales, the sugar (planters are urging Mr Barton to re- (

consider his avowal to mike a rate Australia” a part of his platform, bomo farmers in I*cw South "MN alts say tsiut to abolish black labour would be to kill the siigar industry there, amt they are asking that consideration bo shown them in tab tariff to make up for the Queenslander's State-aided black labour, which, being indentured, cannot bp abolished suddenly. Thera is certain to be a great- bat tie - over w hite versus black labour in the semi-tropical and nopical parts of Australia; arid imp. aspect ci the cate has not been adequately considered by the people of New ''or.lanci. Although the products cf Australian coloured labour would in all probability reach this country, it is the effect that tho presence of thousands, if nob millions, of coloured people would liavo upon tho development of Australian hie * and civilisation which ought to concern us. If, as assorted, it is impossible to work the fertile lands in tho tropical parts of Australia with ether than blacks, Chinese or Japanese, in tho course of generations conditions mud:, arise that, will became repulsive to tho people of New Zealand, and if wo were to become closely allied with Australia there would be no escaping the degenerating influences which union with a company of States sanctioning coloured labour would have upon tho people of these islands. There w;il be mrnv conflicting issues to adjust, by the Federal Pari Iran cut, but- none w®ill approach nearer to a provocation of civil war than tho conflict over the threatened abolition of coloured labour. As New /.cabu-d will never be troubled directly with that question, as a- labour prcblem. a, carolul consideration of its bearings, from the political. social and anthropological standpoints, ought to give cs pause before wo ru-ioivo to eater into an “indissoluble union' 1 with tho Australian Commonwealth.