AUSTRALIA'S FUTURE

New Zealand Times, Volume LIV, Issue 12660, 21 January 1927, Page 10

AUSTRALIA'S FUTURE

A REMARKABLE DISCOVERY DROUGHTS NO LONGER A DANGER GOVERNMENT METEOROLOGIST'S STATEMENT The prosperity of Australia as a whole i>s no longer bv droughts. This remarkable scientific discovery was announced by Mr Hunt, Commonwealth Meteorologist, at Melbourne, the other day, when forecasting a rose-hued future for the Commonwealth. There mav still be isolated case.s of hardship and 'severe loss caused by drought in particular districts, such as that being experienced in Western Queensland, he said, but tho opening up of new country under, closer settlement conditions, providing increased production, and enabling one part of the continent to balance another, added to foreign demand© for our wool and other products, had a stabilising effect on the prosperity of the Commonwealth. Mr Hunt was asked some months ago to read a paper- on the economic, prospects of meteorology before the Bendigo Rotarians, and just about that time a statement by a public man that nothing but a very severe drought -would stabilise industrial conditions in Australia, claimed his attention. With typical thoroughness Mr Hunt investigated the subject of the effects of drought on the prosperity of the Commonwealth, as set out by the Commonwealth Statistician, over a number of years. As a result of his investigation© he has prepared a graph, in which the productivity curse of the country is super-imposed on that of the rainfall. The period under observation was from 1891 to 1925. The value of productfrtn cluriDg these years increased from .£100,000,000 in 1891 to *£500,000,000 in 1925. The reduction in productivity, in sympathy with a rainfall below the average for drought year, was formerly marked, but in recent years the sympathetic decline has been decreasing, and it now reached where drought could produce no corresponding reaction on Australia's total production. FOR INSTANCE. By way of illustrating on a small scale the beneficial effects on prosperity of closer settlement, Mr Hunt instanced the opening up of new land in Victoria. When that State was depending for its revenue from the southern and northeastern areas only a serious drought in Gippsland meant a corresponding shortage in the State's revenue. Now, however, with the settlement of the malle*, a low rainfall in Gippsland would be o£set by prosperous conditions in the mallee. The opening up of additional large areas of settlement in other States, and improved methods for the conservation of food and water, would in future years. more than counterbalance any local depression arising from a period of drought, enabling the Commonwealth to emerge triumphant with its prosperity unaffected. So said Mr Hunt, in a matter-of-fact tone of his voice as he calmly relit his pipe, and by so saying conveyed the deliberate studied answer of the scientist to the idealistic dream of the poet, George Essex Ervans, when the latter penned his glorious vision of a future Australia, supreme, unconquerable : When the land that lies like a giant asleep, Shall wake to the victory won; And the hearts of the nation builders Shall know that the work is done!!