“THIN END OF WEDGE”

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 100, 22 January 1935, Page 8

“THIN END OF WEDGE”

Secessionists’ Grievance in Western Australia TONGUES IN THEIR CHEEKS “The serious problem that has arisen in Australia is not secession itself, but rather the cause of the grievance held by Western Australia. Certainly something has got to be done to better the position, and Western Australians are satisfied to kick up a row about secession, and hope they will get something out of it. They themselves have their tongues in their cheeks; I don’t think they take their own threat seriously.” So said Mr. R. B. Ashe, New Zealand’s new manager for the Colonial Mutual Life Assurance Society, Ltd., when interviewed by “The Dominion” yesterday on his arrival in the Maunganui from Australia. Mr. Ashe was formerly manager for the society in Adelaide. ■ “The position as it is regarded generally in Australia is to this effect,” he said: "Secession is being aimed at by the primary-producing states in order to get a larger share of the prosperity of the Commonwealth. Australia has a very high protective tariff; it protects industries which are situated, generally speaking, in Sydney and Melbourne. New' South Wales and Victoria are about self-contained as far as primary producing is concerned, and also they have most of the secondary production in Australia, so the position arises that all its manufactured goods come to Western Australia from Melbourne and Sydney, and all its money goes to Melbourne apd Sydney. “Western Australians think they have the thin edge of the wedge; and so they have. But the better-informed people in Australia don’t think secession is the remedy for it.”