Billy Hughes

"We have not the option of keeping out all would-be immigrants—some by our laws, others by passive resistance. One choice, and one only, is given to us. We can bring in without delay our kinsmen from Britain, and, if the numbers of these be insufficient, such other white races as will assimilate with our own. Or we can live for a short season in a paradise of fools, and then see the doors of our house forced, and streams of people from lands where there is hardly standing room, pour in and submerge us. That is the position which confronts us."

"Whatever we have achieved—and our achievements are many and great—has come because we have believed in Australia, in ourselves, in our race. It is this spirit which enabled us to fight—doggedly, if you like, but determinedly—Nature in her sternest moods, to endure and emerge triumphant from droughts, floods, and other evils that have beset us."

"We can only hope to cheek the drift towards the great cities—manifested throughout the world—which here has gone much farther than is safe, if we make life on the land profitable and attractive. The wonderful discoveries of applied science, and their application to industry; the marvellous improvements that have been made in transport and communications by railways, motor transport, telegraph and telephone and wireless, have placed at our disposal means by which life, in the country can be made as attractive, as comfortable, and as profitable as in the great cities."