The new Australian Navigation Act, it is announced, will come
into force on July 1st. This Act, we fear, will have a serious effect both on British shipping in the Australian trade and also on the smaller Australian ports. For its purpose is to exclude from the coasting trade all ships, whether British or not, In which the crews are not paid at Australian rates and housed in accordance with Australian requirements. That our merchant seamen should have proper accommodation is most desirable ; that they should be paid on the Australian scale is hardly possible, since the cost of living is much higher there than here. Thus from July let a British liner calling at Fremantle will not be able, for example, to ship passengers and goods for Adelaide or Melbourne. A British visitor who makes a short stay in Western Australia will not be able to continue his voyage in the next liner. The Act makes an exception for Port Darwin, in the Northern Territory, which depends mainly on calls from British steamers, and perhaps also for Thursday Island. But from all the remunerative coasting traffic the regular liners will, it seems,
be excluded. This policy may perhaps benefit the steamers owned by the Commonwealth and worked, it is said, at a very heavy loss. But we are sure that Australia as a whole, as well as British shipowners, will suffer by this measure of high Protec- tion. The Commonwealth, with its few railways and its long coast-line, needs to attract rather than to repel shipping.
Previous page
