THE NORTHERN TERRITORY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3168, 2 December 1914, Page 21

THE NORTHERN TERRITORY.

The Northern Territory does not seem the attractive place that politicians picture it (says the Pastoral Review). Politicians tell us that the crux of tho success or failure of tho Northern Territory is how to get its products to market. Business men would say that the crux is how to get labour to produce anything there at a remunerative price. White men will not go there to work under tropical conditions for wages that will enable settlers to work the land profitably: and why they when, for the next generation, there will be plenty of work for them available down south in a healthy climate and near civilisation? No railway will affect this side of tho Question; it is simply pouring money into a sink. The only chance of making our Northern Territory profitable and of bringing revenue to the proposed railway is by importing indentured labour from India or Java, to be employed within that 75dcg wet-bulb temperature area, as shown in the map published in the April Review. In this way a highly prosperous Northern Australia can be built un- Young Australians

will have thousands of lucrative billets opened to them as managers, overseers, engineers, etc., and white women will be able to live in decency with tropical labour to do all the hard and menial work for them. The area we refer to is not suitable, and never will be suitable, for white women and children unless they are allowed black or yellow labour from which to draw their servants. Anything else is “beating the air.”