CO885-(16-18) — Page 775

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference:→→

C.O.885

18 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

Fourteenth Day.

9 May 1907.

BRITISH INTERESTS IN THE PACIFIC.

(Mr. Denkin.)

124

be obtained. Therefore, they told us that this Convention must be accepted or rejected as a whole.

Now I take it that anyone who has followed this simple statement of the course of events will realise that those who have heard the statements made in public in this country with reference to the manner in which this Con- vention is formed may be pardoned if they have arrived at an entirely misleading view of the circumstances. To say that a correspondence with us had been proceeding for many years is perfectly true, but quite irrelevant to the making of this Convention. To say that we were consulted at every step is an abuse of language, so far as that Convention is concerned. To lead anyone to suppose that the Commonwealth or its Government had the faintest tittle of responsibility for either this Commission or the personnel of this Commission, matters on which I think we were fully entitled to be heard, or to allow it to be supposed that we knew anything of that Commission, its purposes, character, or work, or of this Convention until we saw it complete, is to convey a series of wholly mistaken impressions. We knew nothing until we received this Convention with an intimation that it must be either taken as a whole or left.

I do not think that this procedure is capable of any defence except by the frank statement that it was due to an entire oversight, that Australia and New Zealand had dropped out of view, that the able gentlemen who represented the British Government on that Convention being capable and well informed, it was not necessary for us to be consulted; that they knew better what we wanted than we did ourselves, or at all events were better judges of what ought to be done in the New Hebrides than we could be. Any one of those statements might be made, and I do not contradict it. All I am concerned to insist upon now is that there should be no pretence that any respect whatever was paid or sought to be paid to the opinion of Australia, or any recognition given to us in a very serious matter on which we certainly were entitled to be consulted, or at least informed, at every step. We were not even informed of what was taking place except through the newspapers. That it should be possible at the centre of the Empire to conduct a negotiation upon matters of grave importance which had been the subject of correspondence for 24 years between the Colonial Office and the self-governing communities concerned and which was of great moment to Imperial interests in the Pacific in this casual and secret fashion, is, I think, the strongest possible impeachment of the methods that have obtained in this office.

It is not because I wish to return to the past, but to defend our action and to prevent the possibility of anything of this kind recurring in the future, that I have recapitulated these incidents. But when I find in the House of Commons a question asked on the 19th February of the Under Secretary for the Colonies relating to the New Hebrides referring to matters upon which we had been in correspondence with this Department, I have again to submit that the methods which make this possible are certainly in need of entire reform. The question was asked by Mr. Whitehead and will be found in column 708 of the Parliamentary Hansard: "I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that the protective "tariff in force in the Australian Commonwealth applies to maize, copra, and other products of the New Hebrides, and has been a cause in limiting the number of British settlers and retarding the development of British interests "in those islands, and whether, in event of further representations being made by the Australian Government with a view to Australian predominance in "the New Hebrides, His Majesty's Government will endeavour to persuade the Australian Government to encourage British settlement by offering a free "market in the Commonwealth to British merchandise exported from the

16

"

+

125

islands." That, though put in the form of a question, suggests or provides Fourteenth Day, material for a number of serious misapprehensions.

I must call attention to the answer, accounting for some of its several misstatements by a too ready acceptance of the implications of the question. The answer was to this effect: "I am aware of the facts stated in the first part of the hon. Member's question. The Australian Government propose io subunit to the Commonwealth Parliament at an early date proposals in "connection with tariff revision which will, I gather, be designed to minimise as far as possible the disability under which British settlers in the New Hebrides are now labouring.' What were the facts stated in the first part of the honourable Member's question? The Under Secretary of State Said he was aware of them and endorsed the statement. Yet no tariff in Australia ever yet has applied to copra, which is the principal export of the New Hebrides and by far its chief hope; it was always admitted free to New South Wales, our principal and practically sole market, and, since the constitution of the Commonwealth, has always been admitted free to Australia as a whole.

It is imported into Australia in large quantities, in part manufactured there, while other large quantities are transmitted to England.

Of course I know that the Under Secretary for the Colonies has no personal responsibility whatever for that statement. He is informed by officials, who have before them the Commonwealth Tariff. Copra has for several years increased in value, and the trade is increasing in importance, so that I cannot imagine how it can have been possible for anyone pretending to even the faintest knowledge of production in the Pacific, not to be aware that copra was and always had been free. The answer proceeds to say that the Australian Commonwealth Tariff applies to maize and other products of the New Hebrides. As matter of fact it scarcely touches any of the other products, as far as I am informed, besides maize. Maize, ground-nuts, and bananas it does touch to some extent. I presume members of the Conference know that maize is a frequent crop, while ground-nuts and bananas, too, have their season. They are not like copra of which one does not reap the full fruits for from five to seven years, after which it is a permanent product for many decades, perhaps 60 or 70 years, and of great value. The other crops are used pending the maturity of the coco nuts. There were, and are, duties in the Common- wealth which affect maize and bananas, but for the first two years after their imposition they did not affect maize at all, because those were the seasons of great demand in the Commonwealth. Then we imported grain from everywhere. The New Hebrides settlers in those two years did a thriving business with us, notwithstanding the duty. They paid the duty and still reaped very handsome profits. One might expect, perhaps, that this should he known since it was a fact that for those two years from 1901 to 1903 the New Hebrides settlers were not in the least affected by our tariff on maize.

Then, what ought to have been remembered and indeed it was directly brought to the knowledge of the Colonial Office was that we had appealed to them in order to ascertain if we could not grant a preference to the maize grown in the New Hebrides, and had been informed that this would conflict with treaty obligations. We had been so informed. This reply is given in February 1907; and it was about that time. It was after we had been bringing under the notice of the Colonial Ollice our anxiety to help the settlers in the New Hebrides by making them special concessions. That was a fact that was well known, and ought to have been stated in reply to the House when a question was directed directly against the Commonwealth tariff and its supposed continuously adverse operation in the New Hebrides.

I 49446.

I i

9 May 1997.

BRITISH INTERESTS IN THE PACIFIC.

(Mr. Deakin.)