CHEERFUL SETTLERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 501, 2 November 1928, Page 9

CHEERFUL SETTLERS

MR. AMERY ON AUSTRALIA WOMEN’S CO-OPERATION (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) LONDON, Wednesday. The Secretary of State for the Dominions, Mr. L. S. Amery, to-day addressed the Society for the Settlement of Women. He gave instances of successful settlement under the most unfavourable conditions in the Commonwealth, notably in Western Australia, Victoria and Queensland. The Minister spoke of the optimism of 60 or TO settlers in the Mallee (a district in North-western Victoria) after an unprecedented drought. He said he had never met a more cheerful community under similar conditions. He was convinced as a result of his tour of the Dominions that women’s co-operation and optimism were men's greatest assets. Mr. W. Mackinder, Labour M.P. for Shipley, Yorkshire, said he had travelled thousands' of miles in Australia. He controverted the British fallacy that settlers there were necessarily isolated from civilisation. Civic development had reached the world's highest standard in Australia.

Mr. Mackinder said he never saw slums in any city in Australia which could be compared with those in Britain. Nor did he see cases of rickets in children which could be compared with cases here. He never saw a child barefooted. Nor had he ever seen more healthy children, more independent men or more self-reliant women, notably the wives and daughters of back-blocks settlers.