Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1933. AUSTRALIAN CONSTITUTION.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 53, Issue 208, 15 June 1933, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1933. AUSTRALIAN CONSTITUTION.

The Commonwealth Government has abandoned for the time being its proposal to hold a constitution convention. When the question was discussed at the Premiers' Conference only Tasmania and South Australia supported the plan, the other States favouring a prior Conference of Premiers to deal with existing difficulties and, in effect, carry out useful preparatory work. The Premier of Western Australia, having indicated that his Government intends to submit to the Imperial authorities the case for secession from the Commonwealth, said that after the decision has been made —and his utterance implied that he expects this to be against the State —he will be prepared to take part in any conference with other States and later join in a constitution convention. Prior to the recent referendum the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth .(Mr Lyons) offered the people of Western Australia an alternative to secession. He undertook to establish "a permanent body of investigation" to which the smaller States could refer their troubles and disabilities and that he would urge the States to set up a convention at the earliest possible moment. It would have sufficed as a Western Australian protest against the disadvantage at which that State, together with the other smaller States, is placed, mainly owing to the high tariff, had the proposal for a convention been endorsed and the secession proposal rejected. But it appears that the sense of injustice with which Western Australia has been oppressed could be relieved only by an emphatic expression of a wish to separate from the Federal Commonwealth. Legally, as the people of Western Australia were well aware, there is no provision for secession except by agreement among the States, a requirement which most certainly will not be fulfilled in the present case. Without raising the issue whether the taking of the referendum was in the best interests of the Commonwealth, it may be said that the greatest satisfaction to the Western people must lie in the fact that their action has made the Commonwealth Government fully alive to their grievances. But that end had already been attained through the agitation which preceded the holding of the referendum. Mr Lyons is still resolved to call the convention, thus acknowledging that the grievances of Western Australia are at least to some extent justifiable. Intermittently, the three States mentioned previously have girded against Federation ever since its establishment. The uniform tariff policy of the Commonwealth has been held by them to favour unfairly the other States, especially New South Wales and Victoria, where almost all the secondary industries of Australia are located. They have resented also the burden cast on them by the heavy cost of governing the Commonwealth; Australia is a much-governed country, the political business of about 6,500,000 people entailing the upkeep of a Governor-General, six State Governors, and seven legislatures, most of them composed of two sections—an arrangement producing much duplication and some confusion. These complaints have not gone unheeded, for from time to time, on the recommendation of investigating commissions, special grants to needy States have been made from the Commonwealth 2 exchequer. But "the unequal operation of Federal policy" has continued to be a sore point, and it is with the object of endeavouring to remedy the position that the convention has been proposed.