A.—s

326

Tenth Day. 2 May 1907.

a House which I think will be nearly unanimous upon it. We passed the short preferential tariff, which was only an indication of what we intend to pass hereafter. 1 may say that when that tariff was submitted by myself with the consent of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, we did not know epiite what the feeling generally of the country was. But now we know, and now we both speak with a very much stronger sense of that feeling than we ever could have done before. 1 must be allowed to say—and I hope i shall say it without offence in any way —that I think the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not fairly treat or deal with this particular question. He took that instalment of preferential trade that we wish to give to the Mother Country and New Zealand as though it was all that was intended. The Chancellor of the Exchequer says that embraces only 8 per cent. of the imports from Great Britain into Australia, that leaves 92 per cent, that we do not touch at all. He admits the 8 per cent, would give Great Britain 100,000/., but says sarcastically what is this 100,000/. in twelve months? On his own showing it is about 1,200,000/. that we offer to give to Great Britain when we deal with the whole tariff, and I did feel, and do feel, that it was not dealing fairly to Australia and to the representations we have made of our instinctive desire —I use the word "instinctive" because it is an instinctive desire, and not absolutely a commercial desire on the part of Australia—to be linked closer with the Mother Country. I wish to emphasise this particular fact, that on the basis according to the Chancellor's showing of the small forerunner', we offered a preference of some 1,200,000/. profit to Great Britain in the year on extra trade. I hope, in spite of what has taken place, that the Prime Minister and the Cabinet will agree to my testing this matter right through and further impress on the people of Great Britain and on the present Ministry here what is in the minds of her Colonies. Whilst the Chancellor of the Exchequer was speaking he referred to the 43 million of people in Great Britain. Roughly, as far as my memory serves me, the Colonies that are prepared to give preferential treatment to Great Britain have nearly 20 million people. That is getting towards half the number of the population of Great Britain. Surely they should receive some consideration, it is not as though it was 5,000 or 50,000 or five millions, but it is nearly 20 million of people thai practically unanimously are asking Great Britain to consider this question. Not demanding it, not in any way saying you shall or you shall not, but saying " We offer you this, and we hope that your people will see the necessity of " dealing with the matter hereafter." As to the question of extra cost of living, 1 ele> not believe that it will be "any more than now to the British consumer. In fact lam sure it will not, and in this way. At this present moment we have hardly commenced to grow wheat in Australia. We have a large enough area fit to grow wheat in good districts and with a fair rainfall, if properly put under crop, to supply Great Britain altogether, but unless we know that we are to get a market— and we are satisfied with the price of to-day—we cannot get our farmers to enlarge the area of farming to the extent we desire. But if we could know that we should have preference with Great Britain we should certainly supply a great deal more than 4.V or 4| per cent., which is all we supply to-day of food-stuffs to Great Britain. If we had the opportunity of putting a larger area of grain in, we could do it 3d. or Ad. a bushel cheaper than we can now send it. So, under these circumstances, Ido not think there need be the slightest danger of any additional cost so far as the consumer in Great Britain is concerned. I hope I may be permitted to have what I say placed on record; it is more necessary now than it was before the statement we have heard to-day from the Chancellor of the Exchequer to let the Australian people know exactly

Preferenl I M. Trade. (Sir W. Lyne.)