FOR AND AGAINST: Regional Differences
Extra Document 1

LET US KEEP WHAT WE HAVE GOT (QUEENSLAND)

… Now Queensland separated from New South Wales about 40 years ago. Why did we separate? Why, because New South Wales could not govern us. There was a population of 27,000 in Brisbane at that time. Now there was over 100,000 in Brisbane. Now if they could not govern then, it would be impossible to rule us now. Look at the progress Queensland has made since then; look at the great crisis we pulled through in the '93 flood, and now the sons and grandsons want to reverse the machinery, that their fathers fought hard, year after year to get, and give over our liberties and rights to a foreign country to rule us. I say no. Let us keep what we have got. It is a hard thing to say when a man gets his hand in your pocket what he will take out. That is what the Federal Government means ...

W. T. Jones, letter to Maryborough Chronicle, 30 August 1899, cited in Scott Bennett (ed.), Federation, Cassell Australia, North Melbourne, 1975, p. 31.