A.—s

454

competition through subsidies and in other ways would be many times as great. It is evident that a country so situated must necessarily look upon proposals such as that made by Australia in a very different light from that in which they may appear to the point of view of Australia, whose foreigngoing shipping is relatively very small. As I have already stated, we have half the merchant shipping of the, world. Looking at the entrances and clearances of ships of various nationalities in British and foreign ports, I take, first of all, the United States of America, which is one of the countries which would be hit by this resolution, and I note that over 25,000,000 tons of British shipping entered and cleared in 1905 in the United States ports, while less than one and a half million tons of American vessels entered and cleared in our ports. There were 15,500,000 tons of British shipping in French ports compared with 3,000,000 tons of French shipping in United Kingdom ports. Take Russia. The British ships in Russian ports came to 8h million tons; the Russian ships in British ports came to 1| millions tons. There were nearly 12,000,000 tons of British shipping in Italian ports compared with less than 950,000 tons of Italian shipping in the United Kingdom ports. Even in the case of Germany, the British shipping at German ports is in excess of German shipping at British ports— million tons as against 8| million tons—but of this 8| million tons of German shipping, 4 million tons were simply in ballast, while of the 10i million tons of British shipping, 3 million tons were in ballast, so that, as far as cargoes were concerned, we were in the proportion of five to three. These figures have only to be mentioned, for us to see at once how vulnerable our merchant shipping is. This is not said to disparage the value of the suggestions for the encouragement of British shipping, but to illustrate the special difficulties of our position as compared with that of the Colonies. There are methods by which the Colonies, or some of them, could give a very direct impetus to British shipping if they desired to do so—if, for instance, they were to relax some of their restrictions upon British ships which desire to enter into the coasting business in Australia, more especially. As a matter of fact, in the last few years those conditions have been made very onerous; so onerous that they will drive British ships out of the Australian trade altogether. Mr. DEAKIN : You are not speaking about what has been done in Australia, because we have no law yet. Mr. LLOYD GEORGE : I beg your pardon; I mean what is proposed to be done, because Sir William Lyne, at the Navigation Conference, said he proposed some extraordinarily stringent regulations. He read them out, and I am sure the effect will be to drive British shipping almost entirely out of the Australian trade. Mr. DEAKIN : They were to provide for equality in wages and conditions of employment. Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Yes, but not merely that; they involved structural alterations of British ships. They would be prohibitive. Mr. DEAKIN : Better accommodation for the men ? Mr. LLOYD GEORGE : Well, we have done that ourselves, and are in advance of every country in the world in that respect. If you superimpose absolutely fresh conditions in Australia, the result will be that our own conditions will be quite nugatory, and ships which can enter and do trade in every other part of the world, except Russia and the United States of

Thirteenth Day. 8 May 1907.

Coastwise Trade. (Mr. Lloyd George.)