The Daily News. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17. AUSTRALIA AND THE SQUATTER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 136, 17 September 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17. AUSTRALIA AND THE SQUATTER.

Ir' Australia the squatting interests ■are paramount. Unthinkable areas of ! land are held iby individuals. These areas are useless for any other purposes than those for which they are used, unless sufficient water can be discovered to give potential selectors a chance. The Australian squatter is not the result of the laok of a system—he is the, result of the 'lack of population. Because he took advantage of the gifts Providence .garo, and, naturally enough, took all the land he could .get when there was nobody else to settle on it, he is rather unfairly nowadays looked upon as the >enemy of Australia. The present generation of Australians, however, hndiug .that tremendous areas of land we looked up, are entitled to know why •any .class should be permitted to rule the roost. The squatter's tentacles are not enjy.ra.the back country. They are in ■the cities, There are squatter colonies , and lordly buildings in all the centres, * and the great ibusiness concerns are > monuments to the money that has » -grown on the backs of sheep. The po- > .pulation of Australia is too centralised. J Thousands of Australians know nothing ► ; abOut the Commonwealth—for the cities ► pre not the Commonwealth. The big

man who can afford to pay ever screams the loudeßt when he is asked to, and so now that the Fisher Government propose the reasonable and just method of taxing those landholders who hold vast spaces of land and run, say, one sheep to twelve or fifteen acres on it, the millionaires of Toorak and Pott's Point are very angry. As in New Zealand and in England, the wealthy element see absolute ruin in Mr. Fisher's tax proposals. 'Although the squatter in the first instance was a necessary evil—for the Sheep kings of to-day are the sons of the pioneers—they have fought tooth and nail to hamper settlement. They have encroached on land by devious methods and the alleged selectors who sometimes fringe a squatter's vast holding are frequently "dummies." Tens of thousands of miles of fencing have done away with th# necessity of shep"herds. One boundary rider on a motor bicycle (tie horse is going out of fashion) is able to do the work of many shepherds. There is in our knowledge one holding of one million acres in New South Wales owned by a man (who owns other properties, too). The total staff (except at shearing time) is seven men and a Chinese cook. No married men are allowed. This land has frontages to two of the finest rivers in Australia and would support an enormous population, but in this case, as in innumerable otjiers, the position of the squatter is unassailable except by taxing him until he loosens Ms> hold. The holding of enormous areas by Australian squatters is death to Australian progress and enterprise. . It pampers irrigation, agricultural settlement, the wealth of the country and the individual who has to take his coat off to work. The squatter at present holds with perfect justice that he is the backbone of the country, but if this particular 'backbone we're loaded according to its carrying capacity landless Australians might get a chance. The squatter is the backbone of the country as long as he permits no other backbone to become its spine, but having regard to the potentialities of the continent, he is the merest commercial grasshopper. Sooner or later he will either become the worst kind of autocrat, or he will be made to let go. Labor Premier Fisher has set out to make him let go, and the squatter has set himself the task of squashing Fisher. It's interesting! ,