The limitations upon the power of legislation possessed by the Parliament of Western Australia are similar to those imposed upon the Legislatures of other Australian Provinces, except that the protection of the aborigines has been placed in the hands of an independent Board, nominated and controlled by the Governor. It receives for the execution of its duties 1 per cent. of the annual revenue of the country, but cannot carry them out without the active support of Government officials. The existence of this Board is strongly resented by Western Australians as an unjust reflection upon them, and as an imputation that they cannot be trusted to deal in a just and humane manner towards the natives; and the Premier, voicing the unanimous opinion of both Houses, has attempted, hitherto without success, to secure the repeal of the obnoxious section of the Constitution Act.
The attitude of the Government in regard to the relations between Church and State as affecting the endowment of religious bodies and the assistance given to denominational schools was, until recently, that grants should annually be voted by Parliament. But the trend of public opinion has been in the direction of secular education and the termination of the payments made to the Churches. The matter was, accordingly, during the session of 1895, dealt with by the Ecclesiastical Grants Abolition Act and the Assisted Schools Abolition Act. Previously the payments to the Churches had been at the rate of about £3,500 per annum, of which the Church of England received £2,000, the Roman Catholics £1,000, and the Wesleyans and Presbyterians £360 and £160 respectively. The grants have been commuted at ten years' purchase, and the capital amount is to be paid pro rata out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund in two equal instalments to the recognised heads of each religious denomination. This Bill was passed, with universal approval, through both Houses of Parliament, but a like unanimity was not manifested in regard to the Education question. In fact, early in the session, the Premier had stated that he had no immediate intention of dealing with it, but his hands were forced by popular opinion, as manifested by the result of several elections fought upon that issue. Consequently, after a resolution passed by both Houses that "It is expedient that the Assisted" (denominational) "Schools should no longer form part of the public Educational system of the Colony," and on the report of a Joint Committee, a Bill was introduced by the Premier into the Assembly fixing the sum to be paid as compensation, in lieu of grants in aid, at £20,000. In 1894 one-third of the children being educated in the Colony were attending the Assisted Schools, at a cost to the country of £2,093 for the Assisted, and £11,356 for the Government Schools. The Bill was hotly discussed; the Opposition divided over the amount, and were only beaten by one vote, and it was finally decided that the compensation should be £15,000. The whole of this money will be paid to the Roman Catholics, who had alone taken advantage of the system. There is a High School at Perth established by statute; otherwise little has been done in the direction of secondary education, and Western Australia has no University. The advantages of primary education have been extended as far as possible; any district which can guarantee the attendance of fifteen children can claim the erection of a school and the appointment of a teacher; but it is clear that, in a very sparsely inhabited country, no system can be devised which will reach the whole population.
The policy of the Ministry has been, in the main, one of loans and public works. They were called upon, at the inauguration of Responsible Government, to administer an area of nearly a million square miles, thinly populated and penalised by great natural drawbacks, such as the scarcity of good harbours, the difficulty of inland communication, and the absence over large tracts of country of a sufficient supply of water. These drawbacks the Government have, in various ways, done their best to overcome.
The principal ports of Western Australia are—on the south Albany and Esperance Bay, on the west Bunbury, Fremantle, and Geraldtown, and on the northwest Cossack and Broome. The most important of these are Albany, a fine natural harbour, which is the point of call of the ocean liners, and Fremantle, the port of Perth. All have been improved, as far as conditions would permit, by dredging operations and the construction of piers and jetties, but very extensive works, for which the sum of £350,000 has already been allotted, are being carried out at Fremantle, in the hope of making it a good and commodious harbour for all classes of ocean vessels. In the interests of safe navigation, lighthouses have been erected at various points along the coast.
As the rivers are mostly filled only during the rainy season, and unnavigable for any distance even for small boats, the methods of internal transit are limited to road and rail. The Government have regarded the construction of roads as a matter of national rather than of purely local importance, and have expended upon them large sums of money. They are at present engaged in opening up stock routes to the North and between the Murchison and Coolgardie Goldfields. Their railway policy has been to render accessible the different resources of the country. The South-Western Railway from Perth to Bunbury, Busselton, and Donnybrook traverses country suitable for the growth of cereals and for mixed farming. Its course is along the foot of the Darling Range, which is covered with valuable forests of jarrah. Parliament has recently sanctioned two extensions: to Collie, an important coalfield, and to Bridgetown, the centre of an agricultural area. The Eastern Railway, starting from Fremantle, passes through Perth and taps an important district adapted for general agriculture, fruit-growing, and viticulture; it connects with the Yilgarn Railway, which has now been completed to several points upon the Coolgardie Goldfields, and will be dependent for its returns upon their prosperity, as it passes through vast areas of arid scrub. The Northern Railway consists of short lines from Geraldtown, which pass through country suitable, in parts, for the growth of cereals, in others, for pastoral purposes; it is to be continued to Cue, on the Murchison Goldfield. The above are all Government railways, built under private contract and equipped and managed by the State. There are also two large private companies, the Great Southern Railway, connecting Albany with Beverley, the terminus of the Eastern Railway, and the Midland Railway, connecting Geraldtown with Perth at points on the Northern and Eastern Railways. They were built upon the land-grant system, at a time when the Government were anxious to extend the railways, but were not in a position to incur the cost of their construction. This system is not likely to be adopted again, as both Companies have pursued an ungenerous policy in regard to the alienation of their lands, while the Midland Company were unable to complete their undertaking without the assistance of the Government, which, in return for a mortgage of the whole line, guaranteed for them the interest and principal of a loan of £500,000. In fact, during the session of 1896, the Government, after negotiations with the Great Southern Railway Company, obtained the authority of Parliament for the negotiation of a loan for the purchase of all its interests, including the permanent way, rolling stock, buildings, and unsold lands.
In the southern and western portions of the Province water is plentiful. The northern portion is subject to terrible drought, such as that which a few years ago almost ruined the squatters and caused the loss of three-quarters of a million sheep. But the attention of the Government has been mainly turned to the eastern division, which includes the Yilgarn, Coolgardie, and Dundas Goldfields, and has an average annual rainfall of about ten inches, and it is in this portion of the country that the heaviest expenditure was incurred during the year ending June 30, 1895. Thirteen large and two small tanks were completed on the Coolgardie Goldfields with a capacity of 13-½ millions of gallons and at a total cost of nearly £38,000. Wells were sunk, bores put down in the search for water, condenser plants erected, and new soaks opened up at advantageous places throughout the district. Wells have also been sunk, and reservoirs constructed, on the Murchison and Pilbarra Goldfields, and in other parts of the country. But the greatest undertaking in this direction will be the construction of vast works for the supply from a distance of water to the Coolgardie Goldfields. Parliament has authorised the required loan, and may therefore be presumed to concur with the Ministry in the belief that the necessary water cannot be obtained on the spot by artesian bores or otherwise. The future of Western Australia is bound up with that of the goldfields. Should they fail through lack of water, recent immigrants would leave the country, and their departure would cripple, if not ruin, the agricultural industry, and cause immediately a heavy fall in the revenue. Under these circumstances, the scheme of the Government, even though it entails a very large expenditure, might be justified as being essential to the continued prosperity of the Province. A similar argument may be applied to the large sums spent upon the railways, since they, as well as the waterworks, should be remunerative; but when we find Parliament sanctioning, in one session, applications for loans amounting to seven millions—and bear in mind the smallness of the population—we cannot but fear that the Province is beginning to borrow recklessly and may expose itself to the financial troubles which have overtaken some of its Eastern neighbours.
So much for the natural difficulties and the attempts made, and about to be made, by the Government to overcome them; but they have recognised that the heavy expenditure upon public works would be unjustifiable in the absence of simultaneous efforts to encourage the occupation and cultivation of the land and the development of the mineral resources; and they have, therefore, while not embarking upon a policy of direct subsidies for the payment of the passages of immigrants, offered every inducement to people to come to the Province of their own accord. Intending settlers or companies can obtain, upon favourable terms, land for pastoral or agricultural purposes, mineral leases, and concessions giving them the right to cut timber upon the State forests. A miner can acquire, on the annual payment of ten shillings, a miner's right, entitling him to take possession of, mine, and occupy, unoccupied Crown Lands for gold mining in accordance with the Mining Regulations. The general conditions dealing with the alienation of Crown Lands are laid down in the Land Regulations, under which the Province has been divided into six districts, in order that different terms may be made in accordance with the varying quality and capabilities of the soil in different parts of the country. Pastoral leases may be obtained at a rent ranging from five shillings to £1 a year for 1,000 acres. Agricultural land is in most parts of the country sold at ten shillings an acre, to be paid either directly or by annual instalments; but the title to the land is not given until certain stated improvements have been carried out upon it, in order to prevent its being held in an unimproved condition for speculative purposes, and residence is encouraged by the enforcement of a larger expenditure in improvements upon occupiers who do not live upon their estates. As a further inducement to settlers, the Government have set apart special agricultural areas, which they cause to be surveyed before selection and marked out in blocks; they offer, under the Homesteads Act, 1893, free grants of land not exceeding 160 acres in extent, subject to stringent conditions as to residence and expenditure upon improvements; and they have established an agricultural bank which is authorised to make advances to farmers and other cultivators of the soil. The policy of the Government has had considerable success, as the total area of cultivated land rose from 86,000 acres in 1886 to 193,000 acres at the end of 1894. But farmers have had to contend with great difficulties in the work and expense required for the clearing of the land, and in the absence of a market for their produce. A distinct improvement, however, has obtained since the advent of a large population upon the goldfields, whose wants they may hope to supply.
It must be admitted that Sir John Forrest and his colleagues have had matters entirely in their favour. The credit of the Province has steadily improved, in view of its mining operations; for the same reason the railways have shown the most satisfactory returns, and the receipts from the Customs, under a tariff levied primarily for purposes of revenue, but partially protective in its incidence, have increased by leaps and bounds. Again, in Parliament the Ministry have met with but little opposition. Upon the inauguration of Responsible Government, the Premier had the prestige of former office under the Crown, and found himself face to face with an Assembly which had no experience in the principles of Party Government. The members were intimately acquainted with each other, and criticism of the Ministry was resented as a personal insult. The so-called Opposition made no serious attempt to overthrow the Government, partly because, in the dearth of men of both ability and leisure, there was no material for the formation of an alternative Ministry; partly because they were in agreement with them upon most of the questions that came up for discussion. The policy of the construction of public works out of loans was generally acceptable, and soon justified itself by results, owing, to a great extent, to the development of the goldfields. Mines had been worked in Western Australia for a considerable time, but attracted little attention until the great discoveries at Coolgardie and in its neighbourhood. These came at a most opportune moment. A large amount of capital in Europe was seeking profitable employment; the stagnation of business in the Eastern Provinces of Australia had brought hardship upon the labouring population and made them anxious to seek work elsewhere; and the success of the South African Mines had caused the British public to look favourably upon mining speculations. As a result, mines were successfully floated in London and in Australia, immigrants poured in from the Eastern Provinces, mercantile firms established branches at Perth and at other centres, and the revenue obtained from the Customs and from the Railways and other public departments increased to an unparalleled extent. But the increase of revenue naturally caused a large increase in the work of the departments concerned, and they failed signally to meet the additional demands upon them.
The Telegraphic and Postal Department obtained an evil pre-eminence through its irregularity and untrustworthiness, and caused much inconvenience and monetary loss, owing to the delay in the delivery of letters and telegrams. Complaints were also rife against the Railway Department, as imported machinery lay for months at Fremantle, because the Government had not sufficient trucks in which to take it up the line to its place of destination. It must be remembered, however, that the public services had been organised to meet the needs of a far smaller population and were called upon to carry out work which had increased at a rapidity which could not be foreseen. A certain amount of difficulty was, under these circumstances, bound to occur, as the Government would not have been justified in launching into heavy additional expenditure until they had reasonable assurance of the permanence of the goldfields and of the consequent increase of business.
Hitherto the Government of Western Australia has been that of a huge land development company; constitutional questions have been in the background. But a tendency is already perceptible among recent immigrants to demand manhood suffrage, payment of members, and other items of democratic legislation to which they have been accustomed in the Eastern Provinces. This movement, however, will be checked by the conservative instincts of the native population, and by the general belief that the Ministry have guided the destinies of the province wisely during the crucial years which have succeeded the inauguration of Responsible Government.