AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5714, 6 November 1896, Page 6 (Supplement)

AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

[Per Pbess Association.!

ADELAIDE, Oct. 31

Mr Noel Buxton, a son of the Governor, has just returned from a trip to Queensland. He made exhaustive inquiries into the sugar-growing industry, the coloured labour question receiving special attention. He said that he had no idea that any part of the tropics could suit Englishmen so well as North Queensland evidently does. Except on the coast whites ; can do" all classes of work. Even on the coast many do very hard. work. The white population is rapidly increasing. Sugar could be produced by whites, but the industry would be reduced to small dimensions if only whites were employed. Assuming that the chief desideratum was for the country to support as many whites as possible, apart from the interests of capital, it might be good policy to get rid by degrees of all coloured immigrants, but at present, and till the whites multiplied, probably the employment of coloured labourers would enable the country to support more whites than it otherwise would, while development would be much slower with whites only. Questioned as to the introduction of coloured labour in the Northern Territory, he said that he thought that Japanese or perhaps Indian labour should be allowed under strict contract. Many whites would be employed in industries which grow up as in Queensland, . and if these afterwards could be carried on with white labour only the importation of coloured could be stopped. Japanese were the best to introduce, because they were obliged to return home after three years. So long as Australia was part of the Empire the idea that immigration would helj> a Japanese invasion was absurd; besides the alarm about a flood of Japanese was unfounded. Less than twelve hundred were working on the Queensland plantations, and hardly any at extra industries.

BRISBANE, Oct. 31. Sir W. Macgregor's discoveries are most interesting. Tropical New Guinea can boast of a temperate region at eleven thousand feet above the sea. The explorers found a Lake. Buttercups and daisies and other plants of mild climates were found, • while a bird resembling the English skylark was heard. Some of the party suffered severely from very cold weather.