TRADE POSSIBILITIES

Temuka Leader, Issue 10978, 17 August 1926, Page 3

TRADE POSSIBILITIES

IN THE NEAR EAST.* neglected opportunity. Ml- John Puller, of the theatrical firm of 'Sir Benjamin and John Fuller, who returned to Australia ■ on the R.iM.S. Comorin after a holiday in Java and Malaya, comes back (says the Perth- Daily News) with the same story of wonderful trade possibilities awaiting Australia in , those lands, but he has also the same report to make that the prestige of Australia’s goods has been depreciated by the careless packing and inferior qualities. • Western Australia especially, Mr Fuller contends, has in the Dutch Islands and Malaya a wonderful trade asset, the development of which would justify the Appointment of a trade commissioner. Java is at our front door, and her 25,000,000 people are now learning to eat meat and flour, and are .gradually approaching the standard of European civilisation, which has created a demand for many manufactured commodities not previously thought of by them. The same complaint against Australian goods, that insufficient care is exercised in the grading and no attempt made at putting our wares in attractive packages, is heard also in Bankok (Siam), where Australian tinned fruits have an excellent market offering, but the people have been put off them by the superior attractiveness of the American article though the better quality of the Australian product is undoubted. Discussing the Near East generally, Mr Fuller said that previously to his present visit he had been opposed to the project of the Singapore naval base, but one could not visit Singapore without being convinced that it would be a "serious thing for the British Empire were the adequate defence of Malaya neglected by not constituting Singapore the naval headquarters of the Far East.

Mr Fuller visited Ceylon 20 years' ago, and the wonderful advance made in fostering the industry of the people, their more comfortable housing, attention to sanitation, and the education o-f the natives in the English language, are a tribute to British colonisation, and in striking contrast to the conditions met with in Java.

Mr Fuller has come back" firmly convinced that the policy of a white Australia must be maintained, those who talk of the necessity for coloured labour to develop Northern Australia notwithstanding. One good Australian worker, with modern

machinery, he contends, is the equivalent of 100 natives, and even without - machinery it takes six natives to do what one Australian can do. The talk of the teeming millions of Asia invading Australia was all “bosh.”