A.—s

136

Fifth Day. 23 A.'ril 1907.

I want to say that the statement made that the Admiralty is prepared to meet the colonies in a liberal and conciliatory manner, and if necessary not upon a money basis only, is a matter which is deserving of the fullest consideration at the hands of the country I represent. I desire also to make it quite clear that I do not say that in any future agreement we make for our country we should give a money contribution only to assist in the upkeep and maintenance of our portion of the Navy. I gathered from the observations of Lord Tweedmouth that the British Government is prepared to entertain a manning proposal. Whatever is the maximum amount we may elect and agree to contribute —and I may say at once we are prepared to give more than the 40,000/. a year that we are now giving—if that is converted into a proposal for the manning of ships and the paying for the manning of those ships in our portion of the world, still leaving them at the full disposition of the British Admiralty even though we pay for the full manning of them, I am quite prepared to consider whether we should not undertake to relieve the central authority of difficulties- which now arise in connection with the manning of our ships, such as having two rates of pay for the crews, and whether we should not man them completely at one rate of colonial pay, outside, of course, the Imperial officers required to control them, which I presume would be necessary, under the direction of the Navy. lam quite prepared to consider for our Colony whether we should not change our contribution from a maximum amount into an amount to be expended on the manning of the ships which the Admiralty may think it desirable to keep in our waters. With regard also to the suggestion made by Mr. Deakin of the necessity for further consideration after we have seen in print the important speech delivered by Lord Tweedmouth, I want to reserve final judgment upon the great issues involved until one has had that further time to consider it. But I think this too important to allow it to pass in the first instance without saying a word or two upon certain aspects of it which struck me as Lord Tweedmouth placed them before us. The method of putting smaller ships out in our waters than those required at home and other places abroad is one I take no exception to whatever. One recognises the principle that in times of warfare the whole strategical work and the whole disposition of the ships is to be tinder the control of the Admiralty, and that they, with the various classes of ships in the different portions of the Empire, will use their greater ones whenever required, and also that they may either elect to keep for the purpose of local defence the smaller subsidiary vessels such as we have in our country, or to call them somewhere else to assist in times of stress. Upon this question, however, I want to say that if it were possible in any scheme which the Board of Admiralty and the British Government lay down to have some unification, even although we changed our contribution to one of paying for the actual manning of vessels, it would in my judgment be very much better from the standpoint of New Zealand to have that uniformity, whether Australia carries it out upon its own account or whether we remain attached to the British Navy entirely. That uniformity of system would, I think, add very materially to the swift and practical working of the Navy in times of trouble. Lord Tweedmouth suggested that the Colonial Governments should equip and maintain docks for use by His Majesty's ships. Upon that heading I agree with the principle suggested, but of course there must be a limit to a proposal of that kind as fer as New Zealand goes. Already we have co-operated with the Admiralty, and we have at least one of the docks in our country which is capable of taking, I think I am right in saying, any of the ships that are out in otir waters —that is the splendid Calliope dock in Auckland. Within the next few years we shall have a very large dock finished at the port of Wellington, which will also be capable of accommo-

Nil v. Defence. (Sir Joseph Ward.)