MAGNIFICENT QUEENSLAND.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 982, 24 November 1910, Page 4

MAGNIFICENT QUEENSLAND.

MISTAKEN LABOUR POLICY. "I have been right up through Queens* land," said "Mr. A. T.Bate to a DojrixioH reporter yesterday on his disembarkation from the Mamma, ."and I was very much impressed with the splendid country I saw. Inland from Cairns—in tho ' high country—tho land is magniSc«nt, and capable of any amount of development. Queensland has bc-en pointed out as tho great Commonwealth State of the future, and I am inclined to think it is. " But there is one thing that is going to keep it back—is keeping it back now. That was the mistake mado when the Queensland Government decided .to bar kanaka labour. Tho manual work on the plantations is not white man's work, because it is not in the white man's zone. "I had a look over a coffee plantation ono day, and while the>o was shown a copy of the petition sent by some thirty or forty coffee planters to Parliament protesting against the abolition of kanaka labour. But tho people down in Brisbane did not know, did not care—they listened to tho 'white-Australia' political catch cry of the Labour party. As a result, whero there were thirty or forty planters of colTeo then, there are. now five, and four of them sell their beans to the other man. That's what compulsory white labour has done to tho coffee industry in Queensland."