MOUNT MORGAN: OPEN CUT AND DUMPS
MOUNT MORGAN: MUNDIC AND COPPER WORKS.
One of the first results of this predominance of Labour representation was the early passage of legislation abolishing Pacific Island labour in the sugar industry—which is almost exclusively confined to Queensland—and requiring all the islanders to leave Australia for their native homes not later than 31st December, 1906. With a view to compensating the cane-growers for the added cost of labour, and to induce them to abandon all forms of coloured labour, a bounty, ranging at the present time from 7s. 6d. per ton of cane in the extreme North to 6s. per ton in Southern Queensland and on the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, was offered upon all cane grown exclusively with white labour; while to provide funds for payment of the bounty an excise duty, first of £3 and then £4 per ton, was imposed. These radical changes occurred at a time, unfortunately, when the State was suffering from severe depression resulting from an unprecedented succession of adverse seasons and the substitution of a uniform protective Customs tariff for the State tariff, which had for years previously yielded a large revenue per head while affording protection to many native industries. The abolition of interstate Customs duties caused a further loss to the Queensland Treasury; so that the Government felt compelled to ask Parliament to impose new taxation as well as sanction severe retrenchment in order to check the alarming series of revenue deficits which, despite large loan expenditure, marked the stressful period. All this tended to make federation unpopular, and obscure the benefits the union under the Commonwealth Constitution was calculated to confer eventually.
The popular sentiment was, however, overwhelmingly in favour of the White Australia policy; and even most of its opponents took exception to the hasty methods of enforcement rather than to the principle itself. Much difficulty was at first experienced in securing reliable white workers, but the remuneration year by year attracted, in increasing numbers, men accustomed to farm work, until, in 1908-9, the owners of about 90 per cent. of the cane grown found themselves in a position to claim the bounty. Pacific Island labour is now almost a thing of the past, though a few islanders who were not repatriated still engage in field work. In the more severely tropical of the sugar districts some Asiatic labour is also employed, the planters alleging that white men will not, unless at prohibitory wages, face the muggy heat of the cane-brake. The bounty, together with the £6 import duty, appears at length to have re-established the industry on a durable basis; but many growers look forward with some apprehension to the gradual extinction of the bounty and the possibility of a reduction in the import duty, holding that without the protection at present afforded Australian cane sugar cannot compete against the product of the cheap coloured labour of Java, Fiji, and Mauritius, or the beet sugar of Europe.
A further objection to federation was found in the mode adopted of distributing the Federal surplus revenue among the States. The 87th section of the Constitution required that for ten years the Federal Government should not expend on its own purposes more than one-fourth of the net Customs and Excise revenue of the Commonwealth, and that the balance of such revenue should be returned to the States. Prior to federation this had been interpreted to mean that each State would receive back not less than three-fourths of the net Customs and Excise revenue collected within its jurisdiction. But the Commonwealth Crown law officers placed a different construction on the section, and held that, so long as at least three-fourths of the net Customs revenue was distributed collectively, the Commonwealth had no obligation to return that proportion to any individual State. This has caused great uncertainty and embarrassment to the Queensland Treasurer, and has impelled many public men to stigmatise the union as a curse instead of a blessing.
In illustration of the unequal division of the surplus Federal revenue among the States, it may be mentioned that, according to a table published by the Commonwealth Auditor-General, while the aggregate sum beyond the three-fourths of Customs and Excise revenue returned to the States amounted to £6,059,087, Queensland actually received £44,951 less than her three-fourths during the eight and a-half years ended 30th June, 1909; and her Treasurer was much embarrassed by the uncertainty of the return owing to tariff alterations and the determination of the Federal Government to defray from revenue otherwise accruing to the State under the Constitution Act the cost of permanent buildings, which the State had formerly provided for out of loan moneys.
Another grievance of the States—especially of Queensland, which borrowed largely to construct its 10,253 miles of telegraph lines, and incurred a heavy annual charge upon revenue in providing postal communication throughout its vast and scantily populated territory—is that the Commonwealth Government treat section 85 of the Constitution as a dead letter. This provision expressly enacts that "the Commonwealth shall compensate the State for the value of any property passing to the Commonwealth under this section"; but not a penny of compensation has ever been paid, although there is a considerable interest charge to be met annually by the State Treasuries on account of money borrowed for the purposes of these transferred properties.