How did the Queensland Sugar industry manage to prosper after the introduction of the White Australia Policy and the repatriation of the Kanakas ?

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How did the Queensland Sugar industry manage to prosper after the introduction of the White Australia Policy and the repatriation of the Kanaka’s ?

After the introduction of the white Australia policy and the repatriation of the Kanakas, many believed that the Sugar Industry would have been effected and ultimately ruined due to the sudden shortage of cheap labour available to the dispense of the owners of the sugar plantations. Many producers fought to keep Kanakas working in their fields as they believed that without the Kanakas there was not enough efficient labour to fulfill the need of the industry.  

On the contrary to what many believed the  Sugar Industry of Queensland grew and remained prosperous after the introduction of the White Australia policy and the repatriation of the Kanakas occurred, this was due to a number of changes in the structure of the industry.

After the repatriation of the Kanakas,  the government did not want to leave the Australian Sugar Industry in an eerie spot, so they introduced subsidies such as the protective tariff, in which a tax of 6 pound per a ton was put on all imported sugars into Australia. The Government also attempted use subsidies as a way to promote the use of only white labour. This was seen through the Sugar Bounty Act in which an excise of 3 pounds on all sugar consumed in Australia in which a rebate of 2 pound per ton was returned to producers whose sugar was produced by white labour only.  The proportion of sugar output produced entirely by white labour increased from 16% in 1902 to 70% in 1906. 

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Initially the sugar industry of Queensland was dominated by large plantation’s in which the producers not only cultivated their own cane but also manufactured the sugar. Big plantations such as these needed as much labour as possible in order for the company to run smoothly .  When the repatriation occurred there was a sudden need to change the way in which the sugar industry was set up in order to counter the labour shortage, this was through the introduction of the Central Milling System.  The Central Milling System was first suggested by Samuel Griffith in 1885, however no real progress ...

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