they made such a song about the great hardships which they were enduring, that they came down to the Queenland Parliament and asked to be compensated for the drought which Nature had inflicted upon them by the Queensland Government giving them indefeasible leases for another forty years. Are the settlers and immigrants whom we bring out to wait for another forty years before they can get an acre of land on which to settle? Although that land is leased, and although it is still unalienated, it is just as unavailable as big privately-owned estates in other portions of the State. Then, again, that land, if properly utilized even for pastoral purposes under closer settlement conditions, would supply fifty times more population with a comfortable living than it is now supporting. In Queensland we find that a man can generally make a comfortable living on a leased grazing farm of from 5,000 to 10,000 acres, and even in the worst portion of the State he can make a comfortable living on 20,000 acres. But how is he treated by the usual capitalist Government-those wealthy people who are saying continually that they do everything for the sake of the poor man? How is the grazing farmer treated as compared with the big squatter? The latter never by any chance pays more than 1d. per acre per annum; in some cases he gets it down considerably less than d. per acre. In addition to that he is generally allowed 25 per cent. of his lease absolutely free of rent under what are known as the unavailable land clauses. The assumption is that a certain portion of an estate is of little or no use, and the Government make a big squatter an allowance of about 25 per cent. of his total holding as unavailable land for which he pays no rent. Now, a grazing farmer pays a rent of 1d., 2d., 4d. and 5d. an acre. On an average he pays from four to eight times as much as a big squatter pays, and he does not get a single acre of unavailable land allowed to him. Our beneficent capitalist Governments such regard for the poor settler, for the great national necessity of peopling the lands of Australia, that where a poor man goes on the land they charge him from four to eight times as much as the big squatter. That is the way they encourage closer settlement. Yet they are continually prating about their desire to bring in more After the facts I have quotedpeople. and I have not over-stated the case in one iota -I think it is undeniable that someSenator Givens.

have

thing should be done in order to enable the people who are here and those who will come in the future to get access to the land so as to make a living upon it. How are we going to do that? What is the best means to employ? I think that anybody who is animated by a desire to do the best possible for Australia, especially to put it in such a position that by reason of having a large population, it will have a mighty force with which to defend its shores if the need should arise, should seriously consider the position. A great many of the States have tackled the subject in a tentative fashion, but what has been the result? In Queensland the Government have already spent over £1,000,000 in buying back big estates which previous Governments had foolishly alienated. The present Government have sought and obtained authority to spend £500,000' in buying back more big estates. The very first result of that policy is absolutely detrimental to closer settlement, because the great need for a man is to get his land as cheaply as possible. The first necessity for the successful pursuit of farming is to get the raw material at the cheapest possible rate, but when the Government go into the market with £500,000 to buy back land the very first effect is to make the land dear. The people who own the big estates immediately open their mouths to the widest possible extent to grab the largest portion of that sum with the sacrifice of the least possible portion of the big estates. That being so, the Government are compelled to pay the price demanded, otherwise there would be no settlement possible. When the Government pay a very high artificial price, then, in order that the people as a whole may not lose by the transaction, they are compelled to charge the incoming settler a sufficient price to recoup the State for its outlay. Generally, he has to pay a great deal more than the land is worth, and he is induced to do that because the Government give him very long terms -from twenty to forty years. What is the result? The man, knowing that he has a long term in which to pay, begins to cultivate the land, and borrows some money for the purpose of buying stock and farm implements, erecting fences, and effecting necessary improvements. From the very

start

tied

he has a mill-stone of debt around his neck. Year after not only he, but his wife and children, and everybody who works for

year,

him, have to toil and slave early and late in order to enable him to make ends meet. Senator MCGREGOR.-That is what Senator Walker wants.

Senator GIVENS. Of course it is. My honorable friends on the other side want to fatten the big landlord all the time at the expense of the great bulk of the people. The unfortunate settler may be able to carry on in a good season, but when two or three bad seasons come on top of each other, he is forced into the Insolvency Court; he is compelled to sell out or to forfeit. There is no single thing in the world to prevent that farm going into a big estate again. There is no single thing to prevent all the farms taken up on a resumed estate going back into the hands of the big land-holder within a period of twenty-five years. That is all we are achieving by that round-about method, although it has cost the taxpayers many millions. But a progressive land tax, which is an eminently just tax, would not cost the people of Australia one farthing. On the contrary, it would put money into the national coffers. Not only would it automatically burst up big estates, but it would keep them burst up; that is one of its highest recommendations. I think it must be recognised as a truism that dear land always means cheap labour, while, on the contrary, cheap land means dear labour. It is because our friends on the Opposition side represent the bloated landlord and the land monopolist that they so much dread a land tax. They know that it will cheapen land, and consequently make labour dear, while if they can avoid a land tax, land will become dear and labour cheap. Why does labour become cheap when land is dear? It is simply because a settler has to meet such an enormous outlay to pay the first cost of the land, and to continually meet the interest or 'rent charge, that he is compelled, not only to work himself to death, together with his wife and children, as many unfortunates do, but also to grind down the man who works for him to the lowest depth. If the land were cheap, he would not be under that necessity. He could get plenty of land, he would require plenty of labour, and have the whole of the output to remunerate himself and his labourers. He would be able, not only to live a comfortable life, but to pay a decent rate of wage to his hands. In order to raise the status of the actual farmer, the first and most vital necessity is to cheapen land to people who want to use it. Australia, with our mighty area, we should

In

be producing almost enough agricultural produce to supply the whole British-speaking world. I have not the slightest doubt that that could be easily done. Instead of

that, only a miserable little fringe of our splendid agricultural lands is put into actual cultivation, and that must always remain so while the available lands that is, those which are immediately available for close settlement-are locked up in the hands of a few big landlords. One can travel on any railway line out of Melbourne, and within 25 miles he will find some of the best land in Australia absolutely vacant but for the occupation of a few sheep. If, however, we go to the Mallee, to the dry country, where the seasons are uncertain, and farmers never know when they will get a crop, it is there we shall find the farmers, and we shall learn also that they sometimes find it difficult to get land there. In this way people are driven out of the State to seek a living elsewhere. Whilst such a state of affairs continues, it is very little use to talk of bringing in large numbers of immigrants, for an immigrant must be useless to Australia unless he is engaged in wealth production and adds in some way to the total output of industry. If there is no profitable employment open to him when he comes here, he can produce nothing. And so long as our lands are locked up, and an artificial scarcity of land exists, or land can only be secured at prohibitive prices. so long will our population be restricted to a totally inadequate number. Yet no one will deny that the great need of Australia at the present moment is more population. At present we have about 4.250,000 persons in the Commonwealth, and it is only a moderate estimate to say that Australia is capable of keeping in affluence and prosperity at least 40,000,000 of people. It behoves the Commonwealth Parliament charged with the national destinies to see that every obstacle to the attainment of so desirable a result shall be removed at the earliest possible date. Again, from the point of view of defence, it is essential that Australia should have a large population, and an agricultural population. A yeomanry population, breathing every day the pure fresh air of the country, is the hardiest and best material from which any soldiery could be obtained. How can any reasonable man expect that we shall have a sufficiently large population to make Australia absolutely secure against invasion while the people are not allowed to occupy the lands. From the

point of view of defence, it is essential that the lands of Australia be thrown open to profitable occupation and cultivation by the people. It should also be remembered in connexion with the imposition of a land tax that those who occupy the land should recognise what was the fundamental principle at the root of national defence in the country from which we sprang in the years gone by. Every one who has studied history knows that in the early days in Great Britain the land had to bear the whole burden of defence. The feudal barons held their land in fee from the Crown, on certain conditions, one of which was that every baron, or landlord, should maintain SO many men-at-aims fully equipped and ready for the service of the Crown. It was thus that the Kings of England raised armies, not only for home defence, but for foreign aggression, in the feudal days. And, indeed, it was only within comparatively recent years that the landlords of England were able to transfer that burden of defence from their shoulders to those of the great bulk of the people of the country. They have done so by means of indirect taxation, which was a cunningly devised scheme to relieve the landlords of their legitimate burden, and of compliance with the condition on which they originally received their land from the Crown, in order that the burden might be transferred to the shoulders of the people, to whom it did not properly belong at all. The landlords have most to fear from any foreign invasion of this or any other country. The title deeds of their big estates would not be worth the paper they are written on if the country were conquered to-morrow. The conqueror does not recognise title-deeds, and we should then have the landlords talking of confiscation. Still, they are unwilling to pay the small premium that is necessary to prevent the confiscation of their property by a foreign foe. I contend that the necessary cost of defence should be regarded as an annual insurance premium against the invasion of our rights and liberties and the confiscation of our property. I say that if the manhood of the nation is willing to give up its time to training for defence, willing to take its life in hand, shoulder a gun, and walk to the front to fight for the nation in the hour of need, willing, in short, to risk everything it possesses, that is all that should be asked from the manhood of the nation. And the property for which it fights, and in the defence of which the manhood of the nation shoulders the rifle, may properly be called

Senator Givens.

upon to bear the whole of the cost, as it was called upon in feudal England, and in that country up to the time when the landlords basely transferred their burden to the shoulders of the people, who, being without a vote, were unable to protect themselves against their depredations. Any one who looks up the statistics of Australia can find out the value of private property in the Commonwealth, and only a short calculation is necessary to show that a small annual insurance premium of per cent., or 5s. in every £100, of the value of private property, would more than pay the whole of the cost of the protection and defence of that property. I ask, is that too large a premium to ask from the owners of private property, in order to prevent its confiscation by a foreign foe.

value of

Senator MCGREGOR.-The private property in Australia £1,058,000.000.

is

1

Every

Senator GIVENS. I think that Senator McGregor has quoted Coghlan's 1904 statistics, and the present value of private property is very much more than the amount stated. A land tax would get a portion of the money back for the people, and seeing that the landlords have most at stake, they should contribute the lion's A few years share of the cost of defence. ago when we were engaged in a strenuous fight for adult suffrage, a stock argument against the demand for equal voting rights for every man and woman in the country was that very many, if not most, of the people had no stake in the country. always denied that contention. man has a stake in the country, and no man a greater stake than the working man. He has his life and the life and happiness of his wife and children at stake, and no man, though he were ten times a millionaire, could have any greater stake. But people who claim that they are the persons who have a stake in the country desire that those to whom they deny a stake in the country shall put up all the money to protect what they claim for themselves. As, on their own showing, they have the greatest stake in the country, they should be prepared to defray the greatest portion of the cost of its defence. I have heard it stated in some quarters that working people have nothing to fight for, and that it is ridiculous to ask them to take any interest whatever in the question of defence. I wish to say, with a full sense of my responsibility, that I do not for a moment subscribe to that doc

trine. I say that they have a great deal to fight for, a great deal to lose, and great interests at stake in preserving the liberty and integrity of this country. What would become of our progressive legislation, of all the reforms on which we pride our selves, our franchise, our political liberty, our arbitration and industrial laws, our White Australia policy, and the thousand and one reforms we have succeeded in winning, if this country were conquered to morrow? They might all disappear in a night, and we should have to begin anew to fight our way up, probably from serfdom, in order to win for our children the privileges and equal political freedom we now enjoy. From this point of view it will be seen that the working people of Australia have a great deal to fight for, and a great deal to lose. I am satisfied that as a whole, they fully recognize the fact, and that if the time ever comes when they shall be called upon to defend the rights they now enjoy, they will acquit themselves manfully and as becomes men of their race. I think I have said enough to show that from every point of view a land tax is not only eminently just and equitable, but is also essential for the attainment of several great national objects. The greatest national necessity of Australia is to have the country more fully peopled than it is at the present time. But if the causes which have been in operation in Victoria, and which have rendered it impossible for those added by the natural increase of population to make a living here, are to be continued and repeated in other parts of the country, what is true of Victoria now will eventually be true of the whole Commonwealth, and the Commonwealth as a whole will be losing population every year as Victoria is losing population to-day. When we hear so much of the necessity for bringing more people into Australia, why cannot we turn our attention to keeping in Australia the people who are already here? I am a protectionist, and believe in Australia producing all the goods required by her people with Australian hands. I am also a great believer in Australia producing her own population on her own soil, as she might do under proper conditions. We have not had the natural increase of population in Victoria or in any other State of the Commonwealth that we ought to have had, because the conditions have been so bad that our young men had been afraid to marry. They have been afraid to give our young women that

great opportunity fulfil the destiny which should be the proper ambition of every good woman, and that is to be the good wife of a good husband, and the mother of good Australian children. If opportunities were given to our people to settle upon the land under good conditions. that would insure to them a comfortable livelihood and relieve them from being eternally faced with the fear of want, our young people would get married at an early age and would settle down in happy, comfortable homes all over the country. By this means we should have a natural increase of population in Australia, and the best class of population in the sons and daughters of Australian parents who are thoroughly acclimatized, and who, in the future, would prove to be our best citizens. If a land tax is not only just, but essential to our national progress, then, instead of saddling the States Parliaments with the burden of imposing it, we, as the National Parliament, should levy it. I contend that the imposition of such a tax is a national necessity both from the stand-point of the peopling of the Commonwealth, and of its defence. The reason we are continually told that land taxation should be left to the several States is that those who fight for the vested interests of land monopolists know perfectly well that the States Governments will not undertake the task, and that even if they did, they could not accomplish it, owing to the opposition which they would encounter at the hands either of nominee Upper Houses, or of Upper Houses which are elected upon a property qualification. The whole mission of these Houses is to protect property.

Senator NEEDHAM.-They are a bar to all progress.

Senator GIVENS.-Exactly. They are an impregnable fortress so far as the adoption of any scheme which would oust the land monopolist is concerned. Not only are they a bar to settlement, not only do they prevent national progress by limiting production, and depriving people of the opportunity of engaging in agricultural pursuits, but, in addition, they exact an enormous tribute from the populace every year. Consequently, I hold that it is the duty of this Parliament, both from the point of view of settlement and of defence, to tackle this question instead of leaving it to the States Parliaments, which are practically helpless by reason of the Upper Houses to which I have referred. branches of the Commonwealth Legislature

Both