The Wanganui Chronicle. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1929. AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 235, 3 October 1929, Page 6

The Wanganui Chronicle. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1929. AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

at the All New Zealand Dinner held in Melbourne Mr Watt is reported to have remarked that it was amazing that although Australia and New Zealand were the same in origin and destiny, neither country seemed to realise that fact. This is quite true. The Commonwealth and the Dominion have each been pursuing their own insular courses. The Tasman Sea is but 1200 miles of ocean but it also represents 12,000 miles of distance in thought. Reciprocal interests are not fostered; they are only played with. With faster steamers to supply us with corn from one of the largest graneries of the world New Zealand continued to put a sliding scale of duties upon wheat so to ensure it being grown on land in South Canterbury. A cry goes up concerning New Zealand butter appearing upon the Australian market and on goes the tariff to protect the Australian farmer against his New Zealand “brother.” How delightfully brotherly we are when we think we can exclude the overseas farmer or manufacturer for the benefit of the one close at hand. Of course the reason for all this is very obvious. The New Zealand farmers have no votes in Australia and Australian farmers have no votes in New Zealand, therefore, politically, neither count in the other country. A tariff is not an economic or scientific thing at all. It is a political instrument manipulated for the purpose of sustaining political party support. “Tariff schedules,” said Mr Woodrow Wilson, “have been made up for the purpose of keeping as large a number as possible of the rich and influential manufacturers of America in good humour with the Republican Party, which desired their constant financial support. The tariff has became a system of favours which the phraseology of the schedule was often deliberately designed to conceal . . . Government cannot be wholesomely conducted in such an atmosphere.’’ Even to-day the farming section of America is protesting against the present tariff revision because the manufacturing interests arc being aided at the expense of the farming section. When the farming community of a country are impotent to stop the import duties ever mounting higher, despite the considerable strength of the agricultural vote, what chance is there of the politicians of either Australia or New Zealand doing anything for their “brothers” on the opposite side of the Tasman?