Che 
ifficulty of. 
quiring the 
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ceept 
secific 
uotas of 
ssisted 
nigrants. 
in which it shall be spent by the States shall be considered after- 
wards 1s in any case open to serious. criticism from the point of 
view of its tendency to encourage the proposal of schemes not fully 
matured, particularly when the operation of the agreement is con- 
fined within a limited period of time. The Development and 
Migration Commission is using every effort to prevent this danger, 
and we are not prepared to say that the new schemes for the 
approval of which it is directly responsible, as distinguished from 
schemes which may be described as legacies from the period prior 
to the Commission’s appointment, are likely to be unremunerative. 
But in present circumstances the field within which schemes such 
as the Commission is likely to be able to approve can be put 
forward is comparatively narrow. It is confined, practically 
entirely, to the field of more intensive primary production. It 
does not include large scale cattle ranching or the establishment 
of further extensive sheep stations, which in any case do not appear 
to be capable of much expansion, and covers wool production only 
so far as that can be combined with agriculture and the raising of 
fat lambs for the meat market. Now almost the only commodities 
the production of which seems likely to be enhanced by schemes 
approved by the Development and Migration Commission, and 
which are to-day being exported and sold at the world’s prices 
without the direct assistance of protective customs duties or some 
form of bounty, to say nothing of such forms of indirect assistance 
as railway carriage paid for in greater or lesser degree out of the 
taxation of the people generally, are wheat and the products of the 
sheep in the form of wool, meat and skins. We are therefore, we 
*hink, justified in describing the field as comparatively narrow. 
38. From the point of view of migration a special difficulty 
oresents itself. Under the £34,000,000 Agreement each State 
indertaking an approved scheme binds itself to accept a certain 
wumber of assisted migrants proportionate to the capital expendi- 
“ure incurred in the scheme. This obligation to take a specific 
juota of migrants in respect of each approved scheme is apt to 
cause embarrassment to the States, though we have no doubt at 
all of their complete desire to fulfil it. We have already observed 
that the opportunities for migration offered by recent developments 
in Western Australia have been taken advantage of by persons 
arriving from the Eastern States, whose settlement in Western 
Australia the Government of that State is of course powerless to 
prevent, even if it wished to do so. Similar effects would be likely 
bo follow from similar causes in the other mainly primary produc- 
ing States. Moreover it has to be borne in mind that the immigra- 
tion which follows from the successful extension of primary pro- 
duction is caused in part directly and in part, perhaps in the main, 
indirectly. The immigration directly caused comes to the locality 
where the extension of primary production is taking place. It 
sets up an increased demand for the products of secondary in- 
dustries. and the immigration indirectly caused results from this