A.—s

168

Sixth Day. 25 April 1907,

financial assistance to one without more or less damnifying the others. Up till now the Government at home have considered it best, both to intending settlers and emigrants, above all to be fair to all the Colonies, and that the agencies on this side should be directed to give the intending emigrant all the essential facts in forming his mind and in advising him as to where best he can take his labour, and adapt his industrial aptitude to any particular Colonial demand that for the moment is seeking his labour. Mr. Deakin will pardon me if I say that he has rather misunderstood, and I do not think sufficiently appreciated, the extent to which the Board of Emigration have done this particular form of work. If Mr. Deakin will look—as he often probably has looked, but I would ask him to look again—at many of the really excellent specimens of literature that are issued by the Board of Emigration on this side, he would find we almost vie with Canada both in the versatility and the excellence of our advice to emigrants and settlers. I can assure Mr. Deakin and the Conference that every step is taken by the Board of Emigration to give all the people in this country who intend to settle elsewhere, facts such as cannot be challenged, because the Board realise that much of the diminution that in recent years has taken place in the number of emigrants from the Mother Country to some of the Australian Colonies, is due in the past either to private, public, or semi-public agencies misrepresenting the Australian fields of labour, and to this information being allowed to go uncontradicted or uncorrected. The result is that suspicion of certain Colonial fields of labour has grown up which can only be removed by the Board of Emigration itself being almost painfully precise in acquainting people with what the real conditions are. Tdo not think that in the particular Queensland case anything more than that has been done. Mr. Deakin was rather severe upon the Board of Emigration for what T believe is after all only an exceptional incident, and one that I trust may never occur again. T would like to point out to Mr. Deakin, that the circulars and handbooks issued by the Emigration Office, which are numerous and circulate through many ramifications, are never issued before the proofs of those publications are previously sent to the Agents-General themselves; and in many cases the Agents-General are asked, and they are very willing in the majority of cases to respond, to revise the actual proofs and correct the draft literature and information which is submitted to them. T can only say with regard to the Queensland incident, that there the Home Government, through its Emigration Department, did what T think was nothing but bare justice to people who were likely to be attracted to this particular form of labour. If Mr. Deakin will allow me, I would like to read the first notice in March. Tt says : "Free passages by the Orient Royal Mail Line steamers are now " offered to bona, fide farm labourers, and their families, to whom employment "is q-uaranteed on arrival at full wages current in the State. The Queens- " land Government, in addition to the na«sacre. undertake to take care of such "persons until they are safe on the farms where work has been arranged " for them. Notification has already been given by the Government to in- " tending- employers that farm labourers will not be indented unless the wag-es "offered are considered satisfactory by the Executive Government of the "State: information as to this sum can now be obtained at the Agent - " General's Office. Tondon. Tt will nrobablv save many applicants time and " trouble to be informed that as the Government are indenting this labour for " employers in the agricultural indnstrv, there is an implied promise that the "labour will be up to the standard of an ordinary agricultural labourer, and "that for the concession of a free nassag-e and constant employment on "arrival, applicants must come strictly within these conditions and must be " what is g-enerallv known as farm labourers, i.e.. healthy men who have been " accustom pd to wort nt some form of fnrmiTior onArntions." T respectfully submit that that is a clear, bald, and truthful presentation of conditions

Emigration. (Mr. Burns.)