THE PASTORAL INDUSTRY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20283, 16 December 1927, Page 14

THE PASTORAL INDUSTRY.

CUTTING UP LARGE ESTATES. CLOSER SETTLEMENT IN AUSTRALIA. EFFECT ON WOOL INDUSTRY. (Feom Otrn Own Coeeespondent.) SYDNEY, December 9. Much concern has been caused among Australian pastoraliste by repeated criticism from wool buyers, chiefly British, of the deterioration in the fine quality of Australian wool. They have replied that they are now growing wool which pays them best, wool which they admit is not as fine as clips of former years, but enables them to secure a weightier return from sheep which are hardier and better ■ meat producers than the old true-blue merino with extremely fine wool. But one admitted cause of the production of a coarser clip is the cutting np of the huge sheep stations in New South Wales and Victoria for closer settlement purposes. The dozens of small sheep owners who have taken the place of one owner of a large run cannot afford to pay the prices for the expensive fine wool merino rams. Queensland has been the home of fine wool during recent years, chiefly because its huge stations have escaped the touch of the closer settlement expert. But if proposals introduced into the State Parliament by the Labour Government in that State are put into effect, Queensland will probably follow in the footsteps of its sister States. The promotion of closer settlement, the encouragement of the pastoral industry generally, and the extension of relief to settlers affected by drought are the declared objects of this measure, the Land Act Amendment Bill, The Bill more or less embodies the recommendations of a land advisory board, with the exception of the suggested extension of one-third of pastoral lands to pastoral leases, which were declared by the board to be essential. The Government,' however, holds that the interests of closer settlement are paramount, and has exhausted every effort to promote those interests. It is opposed to the locking up of large areas of pastoral country. In a review of the Bill, a leading Brisbane newspaper said : —“ The Government has declined, even in the face of the evi dence of the anaemic state of the pastoral industry, reeling from the effects of one of the greatest droughts in Queensland’s history, to abandon its policy of nonextension of pastoral leases. There is no redress for pastoralists in the Bill. Concessions are to be afforded the grazing industry, but they are at the mercy of the Minister, and the words ‘ subject to the absolute discretion ’ of the Mniister, are a,i oft-recurring phrase in a Bill of copious dimensions.” Between 1926 and 1932 the leases of 478 pastoral holdings in Queensland, aggregating more than 31,000,000 acres of Crown lands, will mature. Last year the area affected was 3.584,000 acres, and this year it will be 6,200,000 acres. There is now provision in the leases for renewals, and a large section of the State’s principal industry, wool growing, is, therefore, at the morcy of a Labour Administration. The whole of the properties will thus be subdivided for closer settlement as they become available. The effect in years to come, according to men cognisant of pastoral conditions, will be a lessened production of wool, which will be of an inferior type to that now produced.