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coping with the rabbit pest. He thought the members of the Pastures and Stock Boards present would 

 agree with him that the machinery was not perr'ect, ;iud that they were looking for legislation 

 to improve that machinery, as their resolutions of last year indicated. He thought it would be 

 to the detriment and not to the interest of rabbit legislation if they went back to the old system 

 that had been discarded, of placing it wholly under the control of the Pastures and Stock Boards. 

 He thought the Minister's proposal was a very reasonable one that was, that where the Stock 

 Boards dealt with the rabbit pest the working of the Rabbit Act should be placed under those 

 Boards. Then there were municipalities and more settled districts ; they should be formed into 

 rabbit districts, irrespective of tho Pastures and Stock Protection Boards. And then, again, the Minister 

 proposed that if the machinery of the Pastures and Stock Protection Boards was found inefficient or 

 inapplicable to this piece of legislation, the owners themselves, if they thought fit, could, by petition, have 

 the machinery of election altered and placed oil a different basis to suit their requirements. The effort 

 of the Minister all through this Bill had been to make tho administration of the Act as suitable to the 

 conditions that it was to operate on as was possible ; and this Conference, if they carried this resolution, 

 would limit and place it wholly in the hands of the Pastures and Stock Protection Board, irrespective of 

 the question whether the Stock Boards, on the area of country they have under control, were best suited 

 to deal with it. He thought the Minister's proposal was far and away the best proposal, and he was 

 prepared to support it, and he hoped that the good sense of the Conference would see that it was superior 

 to the amendment. Take Molong Stock Board. Their area extended partly beyond and to the west of 

 the Harvey Ranges. There was nothing in common between the owners on the east and the owners on 

 the west of that Eange, and there had been considerable friction between them. The western owners 

 were pestered with wallabies and kangaroos, and the eastern with hares. The sole effort of the Board 

 had been to keep down the hare pest. The Eastern Division controlled completely the moneys of the 

 district, and no money had been available for the putting down of the' pest in the west, although that 

 district contributed to the funds. As a consequence, the western district were petitioning to be placed 

 under another Stock Board. How, then, in a big district like this, would it be possible to work the Eabbit 

 Act successfully, when by its very nature it required that the administration should be more local ? The 

 same thing applied to Condobolin. There had been friction among the stock-owners on the south side of 

 the river and on the north side. The conditions were different. Those on the north side had a pest of 

 wallaby, and those on the south had nothing. The south controlled the money and they had done little. 

 He thought he was correct in saying that with very few exceptions the small owners took no interest in 

 the constitution of the Board. In Condobolin, when the small owners tried to get representation, they 

 had to travel 80 miles to record their vote. But that was only the initial stage, and he believed that this 

 Eabbit Bill, if the amendment as proposed by the Honorable Rupert Carington was passed, would be 

 practically a dead letter, and outside the Stock Boards it would not meet the views of the great body of 

 land-owners who had to contribute the funds. 



Mr. FHEEMAX thought the whole crux of this question was simply that they had got to find the 

 money ; and why should they, who were in the midst of it and knew exactly what was going on from day 

 to day, not be the people to spend the money ? He certainly thought, therefore, that the administration 

 of this Act should be placed in the hands of the Sheep Boards. If the local body could not successfully 

 administer this Act, how could the Minister administer it from the head office in Sydney ? 



Mr. T. BROWN, M.L. A., said that if the gentleman would permit him to correct him, he would point 

 out that the difference between Mr. Freeman's wishes and his own was, that he, Mr. Brown, wanted it to 

 be under Local Boards, while Mr. Freeman wanted it to be under Stock Boards. He thought that local 

 Eabbit Boards would doal with it more effectively than the Stock Boards could do. 



Mr. FHEEMAX read subsection () of clause 5 : " The Governor may remove any member of a Board 

 who appears to the Governor to have failed to do, or be incapable of doing, his duty." The Governor 

 meant the Minister. Why should the Minister have this power? Why should a Minister remove a 

 Board, perhaps on the recommendation of some quarrelling member of Parliament ? Then let them look 

 at subsection (fj) again. t; The Governor may fill in a casual vacancy upon the Board, and may in such 

 case appoint a Board for a less period than three years." Why should the Minister have such power? 

 Why should the Minister come in? He had the power to nominate two men already as the Bill stood, 

 and why should he come and put a third man and take away the balance of the voting power ? What he 

 would draw their attention to was this : that if they were going to place this Bill under the Pastures and 

 Stock Boards, then the Pastures and Stock Boards should administer it, and not the Minister for Lands. 

 Mr. WII.KES (Broken Hill), in supporting this, said that he thought Mr. Brown had been the best 

 arguer in its favour that they could have. Mr. Brown had mentioned the Molong Board, and they were 

 so dissatisfied with this and that, that they would not take the trouble to elect a member. Mr. Brown 

 had also mentioned the Condobolin Board as being dissatisfied ; but what had happened in Condobolin? 

 Why, they had carried it their own way, and this showed that the Pastures and Stock Boards were 

 elective Boards and properly representative Boards. There were a number of gentlemen who had come to 

 the Conference with certain ideas about the Pastures and Stock Boards, but they had altered them a lot. 

 What was the use of singing out that they had no power when a man could fling an Act in their faces 

 and say, " There you have all the power you ask for." He thought it was utterly ridiculous for a man to 

 say this when he had an Act of Parliament like that before his eyes. Then he must tackle Mr. Taylor. 

 Mr. Taylor had said that the creation of the Act of 1883 was because of the default of what had been 

 done under the Pastures and Stock Act. It was fourteen years ago since that great error was committed, 

 and now they had a representative body that knew something about rabbits. He would like a few of 

 them to stand up and say what they knew about rabbits fourteen years ago. He would guarantee that 

 they knew very little indeed then with reference to them. There had been a couple of generations since 

 then. Fourteen years ago many men in the room had been in good positions then, but during those 

 fourteen years the rabbits had brought them down a bit. That argument of Mr. Taylor's would not hold 

 water. He would say that although, then, they had not had fourteen years' experience of rabbits, still, if 

 the Act had been administered as it should, and if they had not been bound down to the central office, 

 things would have been different. As it was, the money was thrown away by the Government of those 

 days. He thought it was only right and just to those who had to pay the money that they should have 

 the administration within their hands, and there would be no more representative way of dealing with the 

 whole of the Colony except through the Pastures and Stock Boards. 



Mr, 



