RACIAL IDEALS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 July 1938, Page 7

RACIAL IDEALS

VIEWS OF MR w. M. HUGHES SUGGESTION BY LORD SOMERS REJECTED COLOURED IMMIGRANTS NOT WANTED By Telegraph—Press Association. Copyright. SYDNEY, July 20. The -Federal Minister for External Affairs, Mr Hughes, commented today on a statement made yesterday by Lord Somers (Acting-Governor-Gener-al of Australia from 1930 to 1934) that Australia was unable to absorb a great number of migrants and recommending the admission of native races. Mr Hughes declared that it would be unwise to admit natives to assist the whites in Northern Australia, adding that it would be difficult to maintain the present Australian standard of liviing, and that the scheme would hardly be compatible with the Australian ideal of a virile white race. The Assistant Minister of the Interior, Mr Thompson, said that there was no evidence supporting Lord Somers’s contention that North Australia was unsuitable for white settlement without coloured labour.

He emphasised that the Federal Government’s policy against the admission of coloured labour to assist in the primary industries was settled 30 years ago, and that there was no intention of changing it in order to admit peoples of no value racially or economically.

Describing Australia as a hoop with nothing in the centre of a living rim, in which there were enormous gaps, Lord Somers, who was Acting Govern-nor-General of Australia in 1930-34, told a Manchester audience on Tuesday that the Commonwealth was unable to absorb great numbers of immigrants. It would have to rely on building up its industries rather than upon agricultural settlement. The north would never be properly occupied while white women were compelled to perform household duties. It would be wise to modify the “White Australia” policy and admit natives to assist the whites. There was no real danger of large-scale migration by Japanese, who were too home-loving to make good settlers.