DANGERS OF SECESSION

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1010, 28 June 1930, Page 13

DANGERS OF SECESSION

TASMANIA’S INDUSTRIES MIGHT BE LOST PREMIER’S WARNING Deprecating tlje agitation for the secession of Tasmania from the Australian Commonwealth, the Premier, 1 the Hon. J. C. McPhee, in a recent ! speech, warned the people against the ] calamitous results that might befall Tasmania’s agricultural and manufac- j turing industries by this move. The I address was given at the Kingborough j Show and was published in the Hobart “Mercury,”

The Premier stated that representative men on show committees had assured him that steady progress was being made in the agricultural and horticultural industries of the various districts. Notwithstanding the depression -which was affecting the agricultural as well as the manufacturing industries, there was an evidence of confidence in the further future prosperity of the important agricultural industries, and an appreciation of the work being done by the Agricultural Bureau, ami the help afforded by the officers of the Agricultural Department, said the Premier. Such exhibitions tended to a keener appreciation of what could be grown and made in Tasmania, and helped to discourage the too-frequent disparagement in our own State of the work of our own people. Facing the serious difficulties that were confronting the whole Commonwealth generally, and Tasmania particularly, the present was an occasion for complete unity among the whole people of the State. He deprecated strongly, at this time particularly, when the whole of Australia was facing serious difficulties, the agitation for secession. It had a bad psychological effect on the people of the State, and from his own experiences when on the mainland, was harmful to Tasmania. Apart from the practicability of the State seceding, a superficial consideration of the question opened up matters for very grave consideration.

According to statements of leading supporters of secession, one advantage of the State having Its own Customs would be a saving by the purchase of Java sugar, instead of Queensland. There was no doubt that the immediate result of this would be a prohibition of importation into the other States from Tasmania of the goods made containing Java sugar. Tasmania’s valuable jam industry, through which over £650,000 per annum of jam and fruit pulp were exported to the other States, would close down, with calamitous results to the fruitgrowers, and the same result would certainly follow in the case of the confectionery organisation at Claremont. Tasmania's departure from the Australian policy iu regard to sugar, and the other matters which supporters of secession urged, would most certainly result iu our having to face a duty (if not worse) in apple shipments to the other States, which, on a three years’ average, were worth over. £520,000 per annum, and our potato shipments which, averaged for the same period, were worth over £630,000 per annum. Tasmania standing alone would not expect Queensland canegrowers and West Australian farmers to pay round about £25 a ton for carbide, when the imported article could be landed at about £l6 a ton, and the factory at Electrona, with its sales of about 4,000 tons a year, would be in a very difficult position. One could visualise in certain conditions a strong antagonism among Australian trades unions to the use of Tasmanian cement, and there a most important local industry, starting next month with an additional unit of production, which would provide for an output ot 75,000 tons per annum, which would probably find it extr’emely difficult to sell its product. The Hydro-hlectric Department was the biggest undertaking of its kind in the Commonwealth, and would lift Tasmanian more than anything else so far as industries were concerned. No industry would come here if there was a tariff wall against the State. Such a question as that of secession should not be advocated at such a serious time. Unity of purpose and of action was wanted, and it was only by developing the products of the State that they would assist Tasmania over the crisis. They hoped that the carbide works at Electrona would be kept going all the year, and the Government had requested that an embargo should be placed on the importation of carbide so that Tasmania should have the Australian market.

The factors in the Australian policy, the Premier concluded, which were operating to the detriment of Tasmania were those which, in the opinion of a big section of the people ot the mainland, as well as in Tasmania, were prejudicing the progress of Australia as a whole, and it would seem that the efforts of the advocates of secession might be better employed iu assisting to cultivate a sound public opinion regarding those factors in the interests of Tasmania in particular and the Commonwealth as a whole.