IMPERIAL DEVELOPMENT BOARD URGED.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 26 March 1917, Page 5

IMPERIAL DEVELOPMENT BOARD URGED.

NEW ZEALAND A BRITAIN OF THE SOUTH. Received 9.50. LONDON, March 25. The Dominions’ Commission, in its final report, criticised the undue aggregation of population In towns. The wheat areas are enormous, but lacking in railways, the average acreage of which yields fifty per cent, below Canada. The mineralogical potentialities are enormous, particularly in Queensland, which many believe will rank the first of the Slates mineralogically. New Zealand is a splendid agricultural country, and another Britain of the Southern Seas. Social legislation and the even distribution of wealth in New Zealand is probably more advanced than in any other part of the Empire.

The principal recommendation is the creation of a permanent Imperial Development Board, under direction of a permanent Imperial Conference, comprising twelve members intimately acquainted with the Empire, seven representing Britain, India and the Crown Colonies, one each for the five Dombinions with headquarters at. London, to make frequent Empire peregrinations. Its main function should be to complete and continue the work begun by the Commission in relation to the production and distribution of food and raw materials throughout the Empire, scientific research, employment of Empire capital, development of the Empire resources, emigration within the Empire, steamships, cables, railways in so far as contributing to Imperial development, legislation affecting trade, and the preparation of Imperial statistics.

The Board should be purely advisory iu its initial stages, and must not encroach on the political or administrative machinery of the selfgoverning Dominions. Its principal duty should be to initiate or report on the schemes remitted by the Imperial Conference in participation with the Governments. .

The Dominions Commission report further states that inter-imperial communication demands vessels of greater draught and length, necessitating deeper harbours at Suez, the Cape, Canadian Routes, and notably at Freemantle, Adelaide, Melbourne, Lyttelton, and Port Chalmers. Australasian dry docks are inadequate, except at Sydeny. Shipping sources need reviewing in 1920, when the Orient contract expires, with the view of securing eighteen knot services, landing the mails at Adelaide in twenty-five days fourteen hours, via Suez twety eight, via Cape twenty-five. The New Zealand via Halifax and Vancouver subsidized services must submit a schedule of freights to the Government to obviate different rates, which are mimical to Imperial trade. The Commission recommends the creation of a Central Emigration Board under British Governmental direction with a consultative Board comprising Dominions representatives.

The Dominions Commission discountenance soldiers’ cmigraton -without adequate capital and training, and urges icreaod female emigration to redrew the balance of sexes. It recommends the Government acquisition of the 'Atlantic cable ond land line in Nova Scotia and Montreal, connecting the Pacific* thereafter reducing the full rates to two shillings, deferred one shilling, weekend sixpence, and the press correspondingly, and assuming the abolition of the Commonwealth’s unjustifiable terminal charge of fivepence, also to nationalise private cables, which is becoming an urgent problem of Statesmanship. Commissioner endorsed Sir Joseph Ward’s views theleon at the Imperial Conference in 1911 Other recommendations are, quinquennial census, Empire international exhibitions, unification of legislation re trade marks, patents, and companies, modification of the double income tax, a uniform Imperial decimal coinage and metric weights and measures.