Australia's Destiny 279 



who are accustomed to perform heavy tasks in 

 a climate approximating to that of Northern 

 Australia. Although this scheme is practically 

 dependent upon permission being obtained to in- 

 denture Italian, Bulgarian, or Austrian labourers 

 under contract, it already meets with a tentative 

 support from the L,abour party. It involves an 

 important modification of that clause of the 

 Restriction Act which forbids the introduction 

 of immigrants under contract. The I/abour 

 leaders are now letting drop guarded intimations 

 that they are prepared to modify this clause in 

 favour of the white labourer from over the seas. 

 Mr. Watson recently stated that people had 

 abandoned the idea that white men could not 

 work on Northern plantations. While not an- 

 ticipating that there would be any necessity for 

 it, he continued, he would be prepared, under 

 certain circumstances, to consider the necessity 

 for allowing the indenturing of white labour, but 

 it would have to be done under very carefully 

 framed conditions, with an insistence upon the 

 payment of fair wages. " We shall have, I 

 think, to widen our platform," said another 

 Labour leader, ' ' so that people from Southern 

 Europe, who are accustomed to working in hot 

 climates, may be induced to accept the engage- 

 ment of work in the Queensland sugar fields. 

 The engagements would have to be under Gov- 

 ernment control. I would even go so far as 

 to agree to a system of assisted passages, on 



