Premier Frank A. Cooper of Queensland today stated that the question of the establishment of a Jewish national home “was one for the Jews to settle for themselves.” He added that for centuries the Jews had an opportunity to build a nation for themselves and had failed to do so, “apparently preferring to live with other people.”
At the same time, Edward M. Hanlon, Queensland’s Home Secretary asked, “what right have the Australian people to complain about the oppression of the Jews in Europe when they have been guilty of the most persistent extermination of the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia?” Hanlon expressed sympathy for the Arabs “whose land has been taken from them without full compensation.”
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