PREFERENCE DECISIONS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19249, 13 August 1924, Page 10

PREFERENCE DECISIONS.

AFTER THU DEBATE. SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES. STATEMENT BY SIR JAMES ALLEN. (From Don Own Correspondent.) LONDON, Juno 21, Australian and New Zealand circles have frankly confessed their bitter disappointment with the result of the Prelerence decisions in the House of Commons, and several South Africans despondently explained that Mr Ramsay MacDonaldo opening speech in Parliament and Mr Snowden’s Budget speech—in both ot which the policy of Imperial 1 reference was derided—did more to ensure the defeat of General Smuts and his party at the late elections than anything else. Further—and what is even worse—it was generally agreed among South African visitors that this rebuff administered by the Liberal and Labour Parties in the House last week to the dominions will be of the greatest possible assistance and service to that section of South African opinion which desires to sunder the ties with the Mother Country, it will prove most effective propaganda to which' it will be difficult to give any Abatement made by Sir James Allen is published in the London papers. V\ e do not know now where we stand, lie said. “I cannot, I must confess, see any hostility to the principles of Ereetradc in the preferences which were refused last night. They were refused, despue the fact that thev had been approved oy the Imperial Conference. It is but a step to the next question; what is the use of the Imperial Conference. “I understand that it is proposed to amend the constitution of that conference. I presume there is some way in -which' the Constitution can be amended to avert such bewildering developments as this. I wish to point out that last night s vote does not affect New Zealand m much as it affects certain other parts of the Empire. But I do regard the pnncip cs involved as the concern of any Particular portion of the Empire. I know that the vote will disappoint our sister dominions, and I feel, on that account, that some method should be devised which will-make the Imperial Conference more than an Advisory Board.” OTHER MARKETS—NO ALTERNATIVE. “I am very disappointed,” said the Hon. W. G. Gibson, Postmaster-General of Australia. ‘‘Australia is disappointed, and those returned soldiers who have settled on their 15-acre farms m the ecstcrn districts to grow fruit ™dl be bitterly disappointed. The decision wil be received with the greatest c V those settlers in the Yanka distnc , - South Wales, the Goulboum Valley Mildura, Victoria, and Renmark, bouth Australia. These fruit-growers had really believed that whatever else happened to the proposals of the Imperial Conference, this preference to dried fruit grown in the Empire at least would be confirmed. These men have been working on their orchards during recent months up bv the hope that the Motherland would give them the preference they so eagerly desired Well, now the Australian Government simply has to find other markets We have no alternative. And I may add that since that vote was taken bist night I have already been approached on the subject of a preferential tariff by other countries. And that vote is no Y hours old. That vote, I may add makes us think. Let me say again that when British tenders are under consideration in Australia, we allow a preference of 10 per cent. In my department, when we are calling for tenders for say, the telephone service, and D-mark and Sweden quote £IO.OOO against £II,OOO bv a Bntish firm, the British firm gets the preference That means a tremendous concession when the tenders are numerous and large. I repeat, that vote last night makes,, us think.’, , CANADIAN OPINION.

Mr P c. Larkin, High Commissioner for Canada, and the Hon. G. A. Dunning. Prime Minister of Saskatchewan, made identical statements. Both' were guarded. Both contended themselves with saying that the matter was purely one for tue Britich Parliament. „ . ~, “Canadians would resent it, said Air Larkin, “if an Englishman went Canada to tell the Canadian Parliament v hat line of policy to adopt on an ? S 1 subject, and I therefore do not think 1 should intrude my views on the British Parliament’s decision last evening. But Canadian business men who n ere approached looked at it from a different ancle “We are not altogether surprised, safd one “as the fate of the M'Kcnna Duties heralded the doom of the Imperial Preference proposals. But the experience has taught us that apparently there is no solid foundation for Imperial fiscal arrangements. The fate of both the MKenna Ihitics and these preference proposals shows clearly enough that any 'dominion industry which exists only by virtue of Imperial fiscal arrangements may be condemned to death when Governments change. We arc disappointed, nut we are not altogether surprised. A CHURLISH ACTION. “We have now rejected a proposal, says the Morning Post, “which would have cost us something less than a million a year. In one year Preference cost Australia £10,000,0t)0. In Canada over a very large range of goods the Preference is ‘even higher than in Australia. It is very substantial both in New Zealand and in South Africa. It is substantial also in the West Indies, although there the Government may calculate that there is not the power to make a change. But the dominions, as Ministers have discovered in the course of this debate have full autonomy. They the I referenco frcclv, and they may end it by thenown volition. We risk, therefore by this churlish action an advantage running into many millions in the most valuable markets of the world “Wien we abolished the preferential system in Canada” the Post concludes “that colonv was brought to the verge of ruin, and replied, first, by a commercial treaty with the United States and then bv its ‘national’ policy of Protection. When Cobdcn abolished the Preference on Cape wines, he sowed the seeds of the Separatist movement in South Africa, for ho ruined the Cape wine-farmers in a single year; ‘The Colonial system, said Cobden'. ‘can never be got rid of except bv the indirect process of Freetrade. which will gradually and mperceptibly loose the bonds which ‘unite our colonies to us by a mistaken notion of self-interest. “We are glad that, as to the future, Mr Stanley Baldwin, as he told the Australian and New Zealand Club, does not admit that the battle is lost even in the moment of this bitter and almost personal defeat. But the Ntuation it at the least exceedingly grave. Mr Lloyd George exnres°cd well-instified apprehensions of competition in the House of Commons. That competition and the competition of all foreign countries, will be made far more formidable if we are now to lose in our best markets the great advantage we enjoy by reason of Imperial Preference.” _____