Australia - New Caledonia cable.
Background and agreements.
Details are provided below describing:
The agreement between France and Queensland.
Launceston Examiner
9 April 1892.
The Postmaster-General of Queensland has for some time been in communication with the Hon. Audley Coote, M.L.C., of Tasmania, the accredited representative of the Submarine Telegraph Joint Stock Society of Paris, for the laying of a cable to connect Queensland and New Caledonia, being a section of the cable communication to be opened up shortly with North America.
An agreement has now been completed (says the Brisbane Telegraph) with regard to the laying and working of the Queensland-New Caledonia cable, of which the following are the terms: A guarantee is to be given to the extent of £12,000 per annum for a period of 30 years, divided as follows:
The working expenses, not to exceed £2,100, to be a first charge on the revenue and all receipts above that amount to go towards the annual reduction of the guarantee of £12,000.
Mr Coote, on behalf of the company, has entered into an agreement with the Queensland Government to manufacture and lay the submarine telegraph cable in 18 months between Queensland and New Caledonia, the company to workand maintain the cable at their own cost. The company is to have the right to connect the cable with the Queensland telegraph line at such a point on the coast of Queensland as may be agreed upon, and it is also to establish and maintain an office at that spot for the purpose of carrying on the business of the said company.
The cable is to form part of the main Pacific cable connecting Queensland with Vancouver, San Francisco or such other place in North America as may hereafter be decided on.
The company is to keep the cable in good working order and, should it become silent and remain so for a period of 21 days, the guarantee is to cease until the cable is restored.
The Government of Queensland is to have the free use of the cable for all Government messages, not exceeding in any one year the sum of £2,000. When the main Pacific cable connecting Queensland with North America has been completed, the guarantee is to be re-arranged and to form part of any joint guarantee which may be given by other countries or colonies in consideration of the laying of the main Pacific cable.
The minimum transmission rate to be charged by the company from Queensland to New Caledonia, for messages of ten words or less, including the address and signature, will be 7s of which the company is to receive 6s, and the Queensland Government 1s. For every additional word 7d, of which the company will receive 6d, and the Queensland Government 1d.
The company undertakes to reduce the charge for the transmission of messages as soon as the increase in the number of messages reasonably warrants such reduction.
The agreement referred to above was entered into subject to the concurrence of> the Government of New South Wales as to the annual contribution to be provided by that colony. The approval of that Govern>ment was conveyed by a letter from thePostmaster-General laid on the table at the Postal Conference and ordered to be printed.
With regard to the landing of a cable in New Caledonia as part of the through system to America and forming a duplication of cable communication with Europe, it may be mentioned that it is understood that there has been a treaty entered into by the civilised nations for the protection of cables during time of war".
"The French Senate has passed the New Caledonia Cable bill submitted by the Government to subsidise the laying of a cable between Gladstone, in Queensland and New Caledonia in accordance with the arrangement made between the Postmaster-General of Queensland and Mr Audley Coote, representing the Société Française de Telegraphes Sous-Marine" (Launceston Examiner 25 February 1893).
A statement of the French view of why a cable was required was made in Paris and reported by the South Australian Register on 3 April 1893.
The Eastern Extension Company had been in discussions to determine if they could provide the cable service. They were furious when the agreement between the Governments was signed and did there best to break the union.
On 19 April, 1893, at the meeting of the shareholders of the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company, Sir John Pender, chairman of the company, said that the principle upon which the proposed cable from Australia to New Caledonia was to be established rendered it unlikely that the project would be successful. To carry such a cable across the Pacific, a subsidy of £100,000 would be required.
The Australian Colonial agreements.
Queensland's agreement to the £2,000 subsidy for 30 years was confirmed in the House in September 1893 - a month after the cable ship arrived in Brisbane with the cable.
On 2 November 1893 "in reply to a question in the Assembly last night, Sir George Dibbs said it was intended to provide for the amount of the £2,000 per annum guarantee in connection with the New Caledonia cable on the estimates of expenditure, but of course only the amount for which New South Wales was liable would be paid. The colony had not been committed in any way to a liability in respect of the extension of the cable beyond New Caledonia. He would abstain from committing the colony to any further liability of the kind before parliamentary approval" (Sydney Evening News).
The fact that the two Colonial agreements had been signed without consultation or notification raised the ire of many in all quarters. The Queenslander of 7 October 1893, for example, carried a comment similar to other newspapers: "The signing of the contract for subsidising the New Caledonia cable for a long term of years without consulting Parliament seems a grave violation of the duty that is owed to the Assembly and the country.
This, however, is aggravated by the fact that distinct promises were held out by the Government that the House would be invited to consider and determine the matter before the contract was irrevocably fixed. It may be a minor phase of the affair that no later than yesterday the Premier repeated the assurance that such opportunity for discussing the matter would be afforded to members, in ignoranoe or oblivion of the fact that the contract had been already signed many months ago.
But a much more serious thing is that the Assembly should have been misled, not once only, but repeatedly, by Ministers themselves, without any effort having been made to correct the error. These statements of the contract being inchoate and the provises that the House should be consulted before the ratification of the agreement, had the effect of quieting inquiry in the House and no doubt preventing definite action being taken. Whether this was done inadvertently or - as we cannot believe - intentionally, a wrong was done to the Assembly that should not be passed over without some expression of displeasure. This new disclosure adds to the other objectionable features in the transaction, to which we have repeatedly referred, and which are causing considerable dissatisfaction throughout Australasia with the action of New South Wales and Queensland.
Further than this, the obscurity that appears to have surrounded the signing of the contract throws a doubt over some other matters in dispute respecting the initiation of this French service, as intended to form part of the main trunk service with Europe by America. It will be recollected that the Act of the French Chamber recites the conditions of the cable contract as involving a concession given by Queensland to the French company of exclusive rights of landing cables in that colony. It is asserted, without any contradiction as yet, that Samoa has conceded such exclusive rights and that, contingent on certain circumstances, the same privileges are to be granted in the Hawaiian Group. The pleas put forward that New South Wales and Queensland did not contemplate making the New Caledonia section an instalment of a Transpacific cable have been entirely disproved.
And now it comes to light that this contract of general Australasian concern has not only been undertaken behind the backs of the other colonies, but has been ratified without the consent, or even the opinion asked, of the representatives of the people of New South Wales, who are to pay the annual subsidy for thirty years".
In any matter of this nature there are claims and counter claims. On 21 October 1893, The Australian Town and Country Juornal carried the following: "Some few months ago Mr. Patterson, the Premier of Victoria, through the Governor, wrote to the Imperial Government, protesting against the action of Queensland and New South Wales subsidising a cable laid through French territory. On Saturday Mr. Patterson received a dispatch from the Secretary of State for the Colonies, in which Lord Ripon said that 'While regarding with satisfaction on general grounds the approaching telegraphic connection of Australia with New Caledonia, Her Majesty's Government cannot but view with regret the action taken by the Governments of Queensland and New South Wales, as it implies a departure from the principles with regard to colonial cohesion and a consideration of Imperial interests to which prominence was given in the. discussions at the Colonial Conference of 1887; and as it appears to banish a chance for their assistance in laying any future Pacific cable passing through British possessions or protected territory and avoiding the possessions of European Powers, Her Majesty's Government shares the views expressed by the Victorian Government that inconvenience, loss and indeed danger, to both colonial and Imperial interests might arise in time of war if the Pacific cable passed through New Caledonia and they cannot, from an Imperial point of view, regard with approval the arrangement under which such a cable would touch foreign territory. In conection with the question of the neutrality of cables in times of war, I observe from the account of the third sitting of the Brisbane Conference that reference was made to the possibility of negotiating an international treaty for the protection of existing cables in times of war'.
Sir George Dibbs states that the dispatch was sent to the Governors of all the colonies in the form of a circular letter. He complains of the action of the Victorian Premier in publishing the letter until it was dealt with. The dispatch was a private one. When a circular letter is sent out,each Governor gets it and forwards it on to the Premier of the colony marked "private and confidential." That is how he received the letter and it struck him as a curious thing to run to the paper with it, as the Victorian Premier seemed to have done.
On 19 February 1894, the Launceston Examiner wrote the following editorial for its readers:
"The Hon. Audley Coote is returning to Australia and consequently, by attending in his place in the Council once or twice during the session, will be able to retain his seat in the Legislature and the prefix which a recent regulation extends beyond the colony in which it has been conferred.
This may suit Mr Coote's arrangements very nicely but it remains to be seen whether the electors are prepared to entrust their interests to a gentleman who is here, there and everywhere except Tasmania. Last session - probably the most important in its history - the Legislative Council saw nothing of Mr Coote who was away superintending operations in connection with the Bundaberg-Noumea cable. Since then he has such large schemes on hand that he can hardly have had leisure to devote to the study of Tasmanian politics. Indeed he has been the commercial agent of a foreign power in an enterprise which will materially hamper Australian Federation. We are not concerned with this phase of the question now. Our object is to remind the electors that they should insist upon being faithfully represented during the coming session".
An interesting interview with Audley Coote, M.L.C. in Tasmania, conducted immediately after the signing of the agreement, was published by the Brisbane Courier on 19 November 1892.
The view of the benefits as expressed after work was completed.
At the Ball held after the cable had been laid, the Queensland Postmster-General expressed his view as to why the cable was important. He made the following points: