1086 ADMINISTRATION AND LEGISLATION [PART V
strangers to the Commonwealth have been facilitated by an
informal arrangement with India and J apan made in 1904.1
A reserved Bill (No. 85) of 1910 of New Zealand raises
very serious questions. It provides that in the case of
vessels trading or plying from the Dominion to the Common-
wealth a duty of twenty-five per cent. of the passage money
and freight shall be levied on contracts in respect of pas-
sengers and goods conveyed by ships which have natives of
Asia among the crew, unless indeed such ships pay the New
Zealand rate of wages to their crews. The latter provision
could not legally be enforced directly, as it would be ultra
vires the New Zealand Parliament, but the former provision
is not ultra wires, but is directly anti-Asiatic, and avowedly
aimed at Asiatics, as stated in the Parliamentary Debates,
and at the discussion at the Imperial Conference.?
With the State Governments since federation the trouble
has been the insertion in Acts of small differentiations against
Asiatics eo nomine. In some cases the Imperial Government
has succeeded in having changes made in such Acts. In
1900 Queensland passed a Bill to amend the Sugar Works
Guarantee Acts, 1893-5, which contained an anti-Asiatic
section, and which the Imperial Government declined to
assent to, on a protest from Japan. Queensland in 1903
(No. 15) extended to all aliens a discrimination in an Act
(No. 13) of the preceding year against Asiatics in the matter
of the granting of agricultural advances, and in other legisla~
tion in 1904 (No. 18) and 1910 (No. 9) has adopted the language
test as a ground of regulation. Tn 1908 the Upper House of
Victoria cut out clauses against Asiatics in a Factory Act as
unjust and improper; in 1909, by a free use of the name of
the Imperial Government, the Government of New South
Wales secured the restriction to Chinese of certain provisions
in an Act regarding factories; in 1907 the Government of
New Zealand made changes in a Factory Act in order to
avoid reservation under the instructions to the Governor ;
but on the other hand, Western Australia has passed several
* Commonwealth Parl. Pap., 1905, No. 61.
* Cf. Parl. Pap., Cd. 5745, pp. 395 seq. ; below, pp. 1211-5.
