FOR AND AGAINST: Regional Differences
Document 6

Focus question
FerQ6 According to F. C. Monger, why will Federation be bad for Western Australian farmers?

PROTECTIONIST AGAINST FEDERATION (WESTERN AUSTRALIA)

... He had made the following ten deductions against federating: (1) We have the best cash market in Australia. (2) We have not produced enough for it yet but we can. (3) A very moderate protection for a few years will enable us to work ahead at a profit. (4) Freetrade with the East will swamp us with their surplus products. (5) Therefore our farming industry will receive check, and we will be losing the present period of prosperity to build up our permanent industries. (6) Goldfields will not last for ever, and when worked out we shall have to compete with the highly-developed Eastern Colonies for an Australian market or a world's market. What chance will we have? (7) By fostering the farming industry we are placing it in a position to bear its share of the public debt, and by fostering it to self-supporting stage we shall then be able to go in largely for the production of ham and bacon with our surplus wheat, and thereby keep thousands of pounds in the colony. (8) Federation, with protection against the world, means a higher price for all farm implements. We shall pay more for our machinery and get less for our produce. (9) The duties on kerosene, tea, sugar, also boots and shoes and a hundred other articles go up, as our free list will be abolished. (10) In other words everything we ought to protect will come in free from the East, and everything we can't produce, and ought to import from England, will have a heavy duty ...

F. C. Monger, speech at York, Eastern Districts Chronicle, York, 28 July 1900, cited in Scott Bennett (ed.), Federation, Cassell Australia, North Melbourne, 1975, pp. 230-1.