Premier of Queensland Reviews World Attitude To Outstanding Problems

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26967, 30 December 1948, Page 6

Premier of Queensland Reviews World Attitude To Outstanding Problems

Special to Daily Times WELLINGTON, Dec. 29. There were a few Communists in the civil service in his State, but he did not think they mattered very much, said the Premier of Queensland, Mr E. M. Hanlon, who arrived in Wellington from the United Kingdom direct by the New Zealand Shipping Company’s motor ship Hororata this afternoon.

Mr Hanlon has been absent from Australia for four months. He went to England to attend the Empire Parliamentary Association conference, but while there discussed immigration matters and also major commercial projects concerning Queensland and involving English capital. He was a guest at Government House to-night, and will leave to-morrow for Rotorua, where he will join his three daughters, aged 25, 24 and 20. and his 18-year-old son, who arrived in New Zealand on Boxing Day. Mrs Hanlon died in 1946 Mr Hanlon has been a member of Parliament for 22$ years, and for 16$ years of that time he has been a member of the Cabinet. He became Premier in 1946. The Labour Government, of which he is a member, has been continually in office since May, 1915, with the exception of the period 1929-32. Mr Hanlon was 37 when he was elected a member, and is now 60. He said he had heard nothing of any Communist-engineered trouble in Queensland during his absence, but perhaps they were waiting for his return. There was no tendency towards Communism in the United Kingdom. The Labour Party leaders there realised that Communists would disintegrate their party if they could, but the Labour leaders were confident that they could handle them. His impression was that a big section of the British people would like to emigrate to Australia or New Zealand. The main thing was to get these people out as quickly as possible. An opportunity existed for getting a fine class of skilled tradesman and persons in professional occupations. It was not a question of getting unemployed without trades training. Those wishing to come were mainly young _ married couples or couples contemplating marriage. who wanted to rear their families away from the menace of the rocket bomb and the other weapons of modern warfare. Mr Hanlon had a very happy experience in France and Belgium, where he served for three years in the first war. He started off from Amiens to look round some of the war cemeteries of the Somme last Armistice Day, a foggy morning, which might recall something to New Zealanders. At the Villiers Brentonneux Cemetery, he was searching through the fog for names that he might know, when two truckloads of men arrived. They were French veterans of 1914-18. Some were on sticks and others on crutches. They laid wreaths on the British Commonwealth Forces’ memorial. This memorial was wired off because it was unsafe through unexploded shells, but the French veterans were undeterred. They crawled through the wires and laid their flowers. It appeared that they did this every year, and every cemetery he visited up to Ypres showed that it was so on the last Armistice Day. Mr Hanlon was a guest of the United States forces in Berlin. The German capital was a very sick place he said. There had been such destruction that it was impossible to expect the people to appear bright, but in the other cities of Western Germany which he had visited reconstruction was in full swing and the people were working with a will. He had discussions with members of the Hesse Parliament. who were confident that Western Germany would get on its feet in a few years, though it would take perhaps generations to liquidate the losses caused by the war, which had wrecked the country’s economy. . , , He was impressed by the fact that the authorities he talked with in Berlin did not expect war. The atmosphere was certainly tense, but care was taken that nothing provocative was done. While the Russians effected a canal and railroad blockade in an effort to get the Allies out of Berlin, it appeared that, this move having failed, the Russians would not do anything serious enough to start a shooting war. The feeling in those parts of Germany he visited and in France. Belgium and the United Kingdom was that no country to-day could afford to be an aggressor, nor would there be general support for an aggressive Government. Exploitation of Coal Find Mr Hanlon said that he had had discussions with those who had formed a company to exploit the big Blair Athol coal strike in Queensland. Many of the big industrial and financial concerns of the United Kingdom were in this company, including the English Electric Corporation, the Prudential Assurance Company, Lazard’s Bank, and the John Brown Shipbuilding Company. The company, which would work the Blair Athol coal deposits, would be registered in Queensland, though the capital was English. He had also seen representatives of Courtauld’s Rayon and Artificial Silk Textile Company, which was starting huge works in Australia, and had discussed with them the advantages of Queensland, particularly its ample coal reserves and its central situation for the eastern trade.