THE JAPANESE PARTY IN AUSTRALIA.

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 133, 2 December 1904, Page 4

THE JAPANESE PARTY IN AUSTRALIA.

The pro- Japanese party in the Australian Commonwealth has found a champion in its Parliament, who has given notice of his intention to move that the little brown man be removed from the operation of the Immigration Restriction Act as applied to Asiatics, and to place Japanese on the same footing as the subjects of European Powers. The London Daily Mail naturally praises Mr. Bruce Smith's endeavour to destroy the policy of a White Australia, for does it not stand for a Yellow Transvaal? but while the supporting view of a London paper is cabled across the world, we cannot learn what the leading journals of Australia have to say on the subject, though it is safe to say that at the present time it is there the topic of the hour. For our pait we are glad to see the question thus again thrust into prominence, for it will compel the Government to raage itself, aud it mast know, or, unknowing, will be taught at the polls, that the Australian democracy has determined that the continent shall remain a white man's country. A big section of the community both there and here would no doubt be very glad to welcome an influx . of Japanese. They would settle the labour question and put unionism in its place, a» have the Chinese on the Rand. The Japs are excellent mechanics, agricultural labourers, sailors, and wharf lumpers, while as small traders they are invariably successful, as witness their practical monopoly of the business, as well as the pearl'fisheries, of Thursday Island and Torres Straits. Then the domestic service question could be so easily and delightfully settled by the importation of Japanese helps, both male and female. )Yitk their aid colonial

housekeeping would, to the well-to-do, be robbed of its terrors, and Ftry Jane would no longer be mistress o. i. situation. And if the Jap is to have free ingress to Australia why not to New Zealand? Just here it may occur to the workers of this country that the motion of Mr. Bruce Smith is a matter in which they should interest themselves.