The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 1930 THE GOLDEN WEST

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1052, 16 August 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 1930 THE GOLDEN WEST

rjOLI) in earth and in summer sky has made Western Australia VI a great .State with the promise of a greater future. In the past half-century Australia’s sunset territory yielded over A. 100,000,000 iii gold from its auriferous lands. Mining companies within the same period paid more than £30,000,000 in dividends. Today, however, the yield of gold is trivial compared witli the annual value—about £10,000,000 —of the State’s harvest ot golden wheat. And while the more alluring industry is vanishing rapidly the prosaic one expands steadily toward a perennial fortune. This transformation in wealth from the laud of the Golden tu t * las brought a change in the temperament of its settlers. I liey are eager for industrial development and self-reliant activity. Like all peoples on earth these days they are discontented witli politics and disillusioned. Indeed, it should be of special interest to the people of New Zealand to know that they are envied by most of Western Australia’s population. Away over there an angry people not onlv envies this country, but demands its isolation and freedom from the politics of the Commonwealth. In the people’s clamour for secession they cite with almost a jealous wistfulness New Zealand’s good fortune in having rejected at the right time the terms of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act which, humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God,” made provision for the inclusion of this country which at one time was a dependency of the colony of New South Wales. It is true that New Zealand flirted with an ardent wooer for quite a long time and actually sent delegates to the first National Australasian Convention under Sir Henry Parkes’s presidency on March 2, 189], but went no farther in foolishness. This country, thank God, declined to adopt the vernacular of the Commonwealth and become a “dinkum cobber”—in grotesque jargon—of the Australian States. There is no outstanding reason for surprise in the vehement Plea of Western Australia for independent government and nationhood. Like Tasmania and South Australia, the far-west State is neglected by the Federal Administration that muddles superbly at Canberra. Perth, the western gateway of Australia, is farther away than Auckland is from the Commonwealth capital. It now believes and says so in plain words that for Western Australia “secession is Hobson’s choice.” Obviously, it has been a good thing for this country and particularly for Auckland that another Hobson’s choice was similar, even better. Today, along the Swan River and throughout the wheatlands of a territory like a continent there is the spirit of revolt. Has not Senator Lynch, whose name suggests the right temperament for a fight, declared that he would say to the Commonwealth : “We refuse to pay your taxes, and you can send your armies to collect them”'? Personally, the fiery Senator would “toe the line of revolt., if necessary.” The reasons for Western Australia’s demand for political freedom from the Commonwealth are as simple as they are impressive. The population of the State is only 400,000. Its voice in the Federal Parliament is as a voice crying in the wilderness. Canberra is 2,500 miles distant from a territory that has only five representatives in a House of seventy-five members. In the Western State there is great need and also scope for land settlement and the development of manufacturing industries. Factories at present are negligible. Those that have been established are handicapped by the inflow of the surplus output of eastern factories, sheltered by the politicians who get their votes from big industrial centres and thus are apt to forget the vast open spaees in the far distance. Last year, it lias been pointed out, the value of Western Australia’s imports was £20,000,000. Of that sum manufactured goods from the factories of the Eastern States were valued at close on £10,000,000, including a protective tariff levy of £3,000.000. That seems a stiff price to pay for industrial protection. It means that “every person in the West is responsible for the purchase of £23 worth of goods from the other States, while people in the Eastern States take only four shillings’ worth of Western Australia’s produce a head of their population. Freights from east to west are only a little less than the cost of maritime transport of imports from Great Britain to Western Australia. There is no relief for that State in increasing its trade with Great Britain. The latest abnormal impositions of the Federal Labour Government make importations from England a ruinous business. Then there is the plight of Western Australia because of the Commonwealth’s desperate financial condition. Great Britain is unwilling to lend the Commonwealth any more money until Australia lias put its disordered house in order. It lias been contended that, altliqugli there is wider scope for development in Western Australia than there is in New Zealand, this Dominion’s credit is high in London, while Australia at the moment lias no credit at all. Thus, the people of the Golden West claim that if it were entirely free to manage its own affairs it would receive from Great Britain the same treatment given so readily to New Zealand. So the whole story comes down and back to dissatisfaction with the work of politicians. All the miseries of Western Australia need not he ascribed to Federation. Isolated independence such as New Zealand enjoys is not a gift from.heaven. There is enough discontent in this country to smother the outcry from Western Australia. If it would help that State in any way New Zealanders gladly would deport the whole of its Parliament to the land of the westering sun.