IMMIGRATION.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13943, 1 July 1909, Page 5

IMMIGRATION.

When Mr W. T. Stead told the members of the Imperial Press. Conference that' the greatest need of the Empire, so far as Australia is concerned, is to grt the island continent filled with .white people, his assertion may or may not have been sympathetically-; received by the . Australian delegates We cannot say. At .all'events it'was the Englishman who: introduced the subject. • There are, However, Australians whose opinion' is - the same as Mr.Stead's. "A number of the Melbourne "Argus" came to hand yesterday containing an article ' by Dr . Arthur, 3J.L.A: of Victoria, bewailing ' tlie a pa thy'bf this Commonwealth and State Governments towards this; great question/. and pointing, out - that ■ " from week* to week things crop up which seem to give support to the statement of those in Britain who are friendly to Australia, that' wo are not really'' in: earnest; about; imniigration." He mentions, two . things, of the kind,to which he alludes. The Federal Minister for- Foreign Affairs had announced that he would scrutinise carefully the ' terms on which a big station owner was bringing out 25 men to work; on his stations; and a New South Wales Minister refused to entertain an offer of a London organisation to send out free- 20 lads a fortnight, .if the Government would place-them for a few months on a Government farm for training. Dr Arthur says that both Ministers may Lave acted rightly, in tlie circumstances; but the effect of their action on the mind of people at Home is to raise the question: "Does Australia really want immigrants, or is it ouly that she says she wants them, without meaning anything by it.-'" Victoria, says Dr Arthur, has erected a striking building in the Strand, filled the window with alluring pictures ol Victorian farms and splendid specimenof' Victorian produce; "but should anyone enter and inquire what induce nients are offered to go to this para' disc of the south, there arc found tc be practically none. There are ni assisted passages worth speaking' of no certainty of work: no land on rea sonable terms." The Commonwcaltl mlvertises every week in one or mori Home papers: "Australia offers tin people of the Motherland a new home where there is a chance for all. An; one with no other capital than energ and perseverance, may prosper in land which possesses inexhaustible and. for the most part, nnexploite resources. To every British man o

woman who wants to emigrate we say, Come to Australia, where every liiau who likes to work can have his own home oh his own. land." Dr Arthur says, in effect, that this is so misleading as to be farcical. A harsher -term might be applied without injustice. A correspondent of the "Argus" offers % solution:—"'The-* United Kingdom and Australia have each its great need at present moment to prepare for an ominous future, and each has just what the other wants to quadruple its strength; the question being how best to bring the one to the other, 'for mutual benefit. The former urgently wants-an outlet for. surplus population, and the latter imperatively needs men, women and children to work her ; vast continent, and "when the hour comes defeiid it "against other nations requiring-. more space for their impelling necessities. . . . So"—let Gre.it Britain lease .from ; the Commonwealth for 100 or 300 years the Northern Territory, and- Settle it at her own expense, with the money now spent on the relief of, the distressed surplus population. ' Here is one Australian who;-publishes his opinion that the country needs immigratio-i; but only for the. region .that is not good enough for Australians. There might even be as much difficulty m settling the Nor-. thernTerritory nsin finding room for immigrants in Victoria —or New Zealand—for, says an Auckland contemporary, " nobody can even guess how many Chinese settlers have alrcadv lu.dcd in the no-man's-land of Northern Australia."