Please wait. Contacting image service... loading

Article text

> HOBART: MON., MAY 9, 1927.
A NEW FEDERAL ERA
To-day's great ceremony at Canberra
will be an epoch in Australian history,
marking the close of a legislative
period and in all probability the open-
ing of a new era. Most people have
forgotten the detail of the struggle
for possession of the Federal capital '
but are aware that the mutual jealous-
ies of the two largest cities of the
Commonwealth Jed to the compromise
that neither should have, that honour
for itself. There was also at that
time the not unimportant considera-
tion that in the event of war both Syd-
ney and Melbourne are too near the
sea for a seat of government. Wash-
ington seemed-a good precedent to fol-
low. Since it was settled that Yass
Canberra should be the site the de-
velopment of aviation has-valtered
matters somewhat ; and though it may
still be desirable to have a Govern-
ment safe out of the way should there
ever be fighting, there is not a capi-
tal city in Australia, or a large one of
any description, that would not-offer
the easiest and most tempting mark
for destruction by seaplane, a de-
struction so fatal and complete, owing
to the nature of the modern method
of fighting by dropping bombs and
gas, that the possibility being once de-
monstrated the mere threat would pro-
bably be sufficient. The proximity of
planes bent on such an errand would
cause an immediate exodus from Syd-
ney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane,
Perth or Hobart, wherever the Govern-
ment might happen to be, and what
would happen in the resulting confu-
sion, or what Governments could do
in a general "sauve qui peut," we
need not stop to inquire. The one
thing clear is that Australia, like
every other country, has to envisage a
world to-day very different indeed
from the world on which the first lead-
ers of the Commonwealth looked out.
If the shifting of the Federal Legisla-
ture from Melbourne to Canberra
could but be the beginning of a gen-
eral exodus from the overgrown towns
to the vacant country, not in war-time
but in Peace, who would not hail it
as constituting a New Era?
Would Barton, Griffith, Deak'in,
Kingston, Forrest, Lyne, Braddon,
Reid have pursued a different policy
could they have foreseen the history
of this last quarter of a century? At
the beginning of this century of scien-
tific marvels they must have felt, not
like Adam and Eve with all the world
before them, or Alexanders going out
to conquer a world for themselves, but
rather like young Samsons given a
world of their-own to carve to their
liking. Australia-though the ordin-
ary maps.even tp-day make school chil-
dren think it a country half the size
of Greenland, instead of being four
times as large as that icy waste-is
a world in itself, one comparable with
the country that is generally called
"America." Full of the independence
and self-reliance of youth, the Com-
monwealth Fathers, as we may now
call them, were prepared to take on
themselves any conceivable responsi-
bility. Australia itself was but young
-it is but young yet! Did not the
first colonisation of New South Wales
take place less than 140 years ago?'
Is it not a mere, century and
a year or so ? since Tasmania,
as . Van Diemen's Land, be-
came a colony separate from New|
South Wales? Victoria, where now
the great and splendid city of Mel
bourne approaches its million inhabit-
ants, was not similarly separated until
the middle of last century-a single
lifetime ago. In 1900 all this won-
derful heritage of a continent the size
of the United States, or of Europe
minus Russia, or of Canada without
its arctic wildernesses, was given into
their hands by the British Parliament
asungrudgingly as was ever any such
transaction in the world's history. The
bargain might have been a better one
for Tasmania, we have discovered;'but
who could foresee what has impressed
this upon ; people's minds since ? At
Westminster . the Secretary for the
Colonies, to whom fell, the duty of
piloting the Constitution for Austra-
lia, was Mr. Chamberlain, who especi-
ally tributed the work of Sir Henry
Parkes, Sir Samuel Griffith, and Mr.,
after Sir Edmund Barton. He term-
ed the Bill a great and important step
towards the organisation of the British
Empire-an object he himself had so
closely at his heart-and who knows
but that he inspired in some degree
the policy that was adopted when the
Constitution came into force? "A
common tariff," he said, "will be es-
tablished for all the colonies ; there
will be-at the same time inter-colonial
free trade. , . Whatever is good for
Australia is good for the whole Brit-
ish Empire." Few men could excel
Mr. Chamberlain in saying the right
thing in the right way when it had to
i be said. "We all of us-independently
"altogether of party, whether at Home
"or in any other portion of the Em
I "pire-rejoice," he said, "at this pro-
posal, welcome the new birth of which
I "we are witnesses, and anticipate for
("these great, free and progressive
"communities a future even more pros
!"perous than their past, and an hon
"ourable and important position in the
"history of the Anglo-Saxon race."
? When we look back upon the Com-
monwealth's history since those words
were spoken, what are the matters of
prominence in Federal policy apart
from the dominant event of the Great
War, which has made such a tremen-
dous difference, to the forward out-
look? Compulsory training as a na-
tional scheme must be looked at in the
War light, and is seen to have been a
prudent step; but to-day the nation's
leaders, who are responsible fdr oui
common safety, doubtless look at it ir
a very different perspective from thal
of the carly days of bounding self
reliance. Similarly with other De-
fence questions. But these are not thi
only ones which have taken on a nev
complexion to-day. What of Whiti
Australia? What of the policy o:
wage-fixation, the so-called Arbitra
tion system? What of the Tariff
And what of the Navigation Act? Thi
general result of these main lines o
policy is that the scheme of Protectioi
which they embody has proved by ni
: means satisfactory. The vast area o
the Commonwealth remains to a ver
? !arge extent empty of population aiK
I therefore undeveloped in spite of it
wonderful and admitted potentialities
jl'f we desire a New Era it is for no
j thing more than is covered by thes
items of policy. Australia, lookinj
at the world* to-day, sees itself in fa
too dangerous a situation to justit;
further pursuit of a policy that ha
given no better results than these
Without detracting from the substan
tial merits of the men who framed th
early .policy we have to recognise thi
they had their limitations. ? Thoug
some of them were idealists of a sor
and one or two were great, Australia
Federal policy lias lacked some of til
elements needed to make a really gre:
nation. In some respects it has bee
too self-regarding, loo little regardfi
of the claims of a common Humanit
?and of things that are of greater mi
ment to every one of us than are most
of those of a materialist civilisation.
There must be in our New Era less of
the policy of exclusion-intentional or
unintentional-which has caused us to
he suspected of Dog-in-the-Mangerism
yet has left us with too- few dogs in a
manger that is empty compared with
what it ought to be. On even the low-
est grounds, for the sake of material
wealth itself, the Tariff system needs
a thorough reform. And White Aus-
tralia will have to be jettisoned unless
we can fill up the country on that con-
dition. The difference of outlook to-
da}'-since the War-from that of the
early days of the Commonwealth is all
in favour pf a policy of keeping with
our friends and our kith-and-kin, not
of cutting loose from them for the fool-
ish glory of being isolated-and weak.
The wisdom of the British Government
and Parliament, and in particular of
Mr. Chamberlain, was shown in over-
riding the separatist hankerings of the
shortsighted Constitution-framers and
preserving the right of appeal to the
Privy Council in at any rate some
cases where it is manifestly desirable
to keep it. The Foreign Enlistment
Act and the Merchant Shipping Act
were also mentioned by Mr. Clumber
lain as cases in which it is eminently
desirable there should be legislation
I for the whole Empire and not conflict
between different-parts; and as to one
of these Tasmanian and other experi-
ence amply supports his view. Now
that'Australia has a new and definite
status of responsibility, and the Fed-
eral Parliament is free from special
influences, let us hope thc New Em
will be one in which our legislator;
will prove themselves worthy their op
portunities.
$