PROPOSED NEW STATES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19032, 9 June 1924, Page 5

PROPOSED NEW STATES

AGITATION IN AUSTRALIA. NEW SOUTH WALES SCHEMES. COMPLICATED PROBLEM. The agitation for the creation of r.c-w Stale.*, which commenced in New South Wales a few years ago, and which has infected some other parts of the Commonwealth, has so far progressed in the Mother State that a Royal Commission appointed by the State Government is now inqivring into the movement and investigiting the proposals that have been formulated ,for different areas

The movement has receive! strong endorsement in both State and Federal Spheres, and’ apparently all that is necessary is for the absolute desire on the part of the people affected to be manifested, and practicable schemes to be formulated. And there is the problem. Whose will is to be consulted in such an important matter —the people of a whole State or the people of the areas proposed to be created into a new State? If it is conceded that it be the latter, what number or what area must be the minimum? And even those are only preliminary problems. The major problems arise over the basis of division.

In the creation of new States there has to be a clean cut. No residue of functions—judical, financial, transport, or of any other kind for the whole area can be retained by the Mother Government as is done where the negotiating areas are to’ remain related on some Federal basis. There has to be a clean cut, which will impose disproportionate burdens upon neither party. And there is a problem indeed. How, for instance, is to be decided the allotment of the vast debt upon the railways. which involves something like £5,000,000 per annum in interest charges alone? The advocates of the northern State think that the proper arrangement would be to estimate the expenditure actually within the areas affected, and make that the chargeable sum, but it is obvious that there is a large amount of central expenditure in a railway system which must be proportionately borne by all parts of the State. In fact, the splitting up of the railways would be so complicated that it is hard to see how, in the event of th,e creation of . new States, it would , be. impossible to do other than hand the whole of the systems over to the Federal Government. But that does not suit the advocates of new States. In each of the different parts there arc. pet schemes for building a railway to this point or that, which, however unpayable they may be. bring the movement itself a lot of local support. Similar trouble arises regarding public works. And is each new State to set up its own judicial system, its own laws, with all the costly paraphernalia that they entail? Perhaps the Federal functions will be increased, and those of the State minimised. That, in fact, seems to be what things are tending towards in all directions—the virtual abolition of States as such, the creation of provinces with functions well defined and absolute in respect of purely local affairs, and a great accession of responsibility upon the Federal Legislature.