SHEET ANCHOR OF SHUFFLERS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 93, 21 April 1933, Page 6

SHEET ANCHOR OF SHUFFLERS

Another round in the New South Wales Legislative Council fight is announced in Tuesday's issue by our Australian representative, who describes interestingly how Mr. Lang fired on the Upper Chamber from one angle and Mr. Stevens is sniping from another. The Lang bombardment was intended to wipe the Council out of existence, but the Stevens plan is only to reduce the Councillors. After legislative and administrative tinkering by various Governments, plus a Privy Council decision, the NeW South .'Wales Legislative Council, emerges as a swollen body of 120—life4 members', too!—that 1 cannot be abolished, or.reformed without a vote of the people. When Mr. Stevens asks the people for re'fonn, Mr, Lang may be depended on to advise them "No"; when Mr. Lang jasks them for abolition, "No" advica 'will come from Mr. Stevens; and as the Australian elector generally votes "No" on a constitutional amendment -—Western Australia being the halfserious exception that proves the rule —there is some risk that reform-by-referendum will amount to no reform at all. When Mr. Lloyd George fought the House of Lords a quarter of "a century ago, who would have thought that a Second Chamber would ever find an anchorage in a popular vote?. Yet the referendum has saved the New South Wales "Lords" once, and may save them again.