From Our Own Correspondent Melbourne, Aug. 13.
The Australian press, or 580 auch of it as takes any in-rest in matters not immediately connected with the unseating of the Government, has been complaining that the visit of Semator Bakhap t. China, and his report thereon Fave been largely shrouded in mystery. It is one of the disadvantages of modern press methods 4 that a Minister cannot ask a person an opinion without the immediate publication of photo graphs, opinions, and possible disagreements of the two men con-comad. Senator Bakhap, being well acquainted with China, was atked to make some inquiries. Now because his opinions, whatever they may he, are not printed in a government document (the mere doing of which would be described as extravagance) the press declares that his findings are being kept secret. Further there have been some extracts published from news-supers printed in China, and the statement is made that the Chinese press is enabled to obtain facts which are excluded from the Australian papers. This is frankly quite untrue. What the China Fapers have said is in all essential rartioulars either what the Australian papers did say or what they could have said if it so please One thing seems gleer, and subse-cent events are emphasizing it, ramely that My. Little, the Trade Commissioner. in no way Overstated matters when he reported rot against the traders in China but against those at the Australian end. Quite lately there has come through a report that a railway authority in China has made a tralian wooden. sleepers. fact, contract for the saprly, of Aus important as it is especially to Western Australia, has been well Fept out of sight.
The other day in Sydney the statement was published that the financial difficulties in the way of establishing an export trade in Australian meats between this "country and the Dutch East Indies had been overcome, and that the Commonwealth Government was prepared to find five steamers to carry the freights. The matter may have been mentioned in Melbourne, though I do not recal! noticing it.! kut the eastern trade is being developed, and I mention these facts lest perchance there may be those who mistake our local political maneuvring for anything more important than it really is.
The Federal House of Representatives has been amusingly active curing the past fortnight. The Government sits on one side, the Labour Opposition on the other, vnd on the cross benches are about a dozen country members, one half of whom ought to be Labour and the other half the most conserver ye of conservatives. In 1915 the Commonwealth Government, acting euch as other Governments did in ihe course of the Great War, commandeered the sugar output. It did so when in actual fact there was no necessity. 1t took precautions, and nothing much hap-yened until 1920, when sugar production having fallen away, and the farmers declining to grow sugar at an unremunerative rate in the face of rapidly rising costa, the Government made a three-years' contract. It was a good contract. It paid £30 a ton for sugar at a time when rhe Government was buying abroad st figures from £78 and upwards. Vhe price to the consumer was stabilized at 6d. a Ib. It is still that price, though the Government stys it can be reduced to 5d. at the and of next October. The Labour Opposition moved that the price should be 43d, The Country Party roved that the Government failed to supply the necessary formation. The half of the Country party, which is really Labour, argued with the Opposition; the half which was conservative argued against the Government, but voted with it. The Government succeeded in applying the "gag" by one vote, but on the no-confidence amendment won by nine votes in a House of 75.
Personally I do not think there was much reality in the discussion. At the most the average family consumes 5} lb. of sugar per week, end a saving Of sixpence or sevenpence does not matter. As the Prime Minister pointed out sugar next November would have risen 60 per cent. as compared with prewar days, but bread had risen 285 per cent. and the cost of coal was a scandal and a menace, but the Tabour Party said nothing. In this coming week the Country Party threatens to hold up Supply. until it is satisfied, but to do so weans the suspension of all pay-rent to the public service, and the Labour Opposition would not risk tais happening for anything.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.