Page:Speech by Sir John Forrest - Western Australia - 1900.pdf/11

 during the last eighteen months over nine millions worth. (Applause.) The colony will also have its railways, which produced a revenue of about a million and a quarter, last year subject to the Inter-State Commission, which will have very little effect upon this colony until we are connected by railway with the railway system of Australia. The colony will also have its harbours and rivers, and fisheries and timber, and of the latter the value of the export last year was over half a million sterling. We will also have the control of all our industries and public works, and great public undertakings. (Hear, hear.)

Taxation through the customs and excise will have to be exclusively given up to the Federal Parliament, subject however to the proviso that during the next 10 years, and thereafter till the Federal Parliament otherwise provides, three-fourths of the net revenue derived therefrom shall be returned to the colony. It does not matter what is spent in the colony by the Federal Government upon services or works, even if the Federal Government spent a million in the colony they must return to the colony during the next 10 years three-fourths of the customs and excise revenue collected in the colony. (Applause.)

Then the Federal Government will take over the Postal and Telegraph Department. Now, the posts and telegraphs last year cost the country £30,000 more than the revenue received from them. (Laughter.) Then as to the defences, the colony has spent £30,000 on them this year, and no revenue is derivable from them. There is also the question of lighthouses, which will probably cost nearly £10,000 a year, and there is no great revenue from them. There is also the question of quarantine, and I do not suppose that anyone will object to that question being handed over to the Federal Parliament. Although there will be a system of book-keeping for the first few years, by which the revenue will be credited and the expenditure debited, still that will not interfere with the three-fourths of the colony's customs revenue being returned to this colony. These departments being taken over by the Commonwealth probably will not in the end mean a great financial loss, but may even mean a financial gain. (Applause.) And it must not be thought that the one-fourth of the Customs Revenue, which the Federal Government is entitled to retain will be all spent in other parts of Australia and none in this colony.

This colony will have some representation in the Commonwealth—in fact, it will have equal representation with the other colonies in the Senate, and at the beginning more than its just representation—if judged on the basis of population—in the House of Representatives. (Hear, hear.) And if the colony sends reasonably good men to look after its interests, the Government of the day there, as here, and in all other places, will not be anxious to quarrel with any section of the members of Parliament. (Hear, hear.) As a matter of fact, they will try and do what is right and just, and they will try and assist members of Parliament rather than try and obstruct them.

The Parliament will try and meet our wishes, and there will be no desire that any injustice shall be done to this colony by the people of the other colonies. Such a thing is not likely to occur. Why, it would lead to rebellion if a colony were unjustly treated. No such thing could be possible in a British community as that one colony in the Federation should be wronged and unjustly treated. We may therefore, leave that fear out of calculations altogether. We must remember that Australia is not the first country that has federated, and that we are federating on much more favourable terms than in other Federations. (Applause.) In the United States, all the customs revenue goes to the central Government. In Canada it is the same, with the exception that certain small allowances are made to the States. The whole customs revenue is there expended by the Federal Parliament for the general welfare. There