The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. MONDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1926. A CONFESSION OF FAILURE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 247, 18 October 1926, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1926. A CONFESSION OF FAILURE.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance_ For the future in the distance. And the good that ice can do.

Rarely in Labour history has such an important confession of failure been uttered as was spoken by the Queensland Premier in the Assembly last week. State Socialism has gone further in Queensland than in any of the other Australian States, and in the process of extension deficits have been piled up to an alarming height. In the period of Labour rule railway deficits have aggregated millions, and, according to the Commonwealth statistician, the service shows the highest ratio of working expenses to re\-enue of all the States except Tasmania. In other State enterprises large sums have been lost; and the Premier recently indicated that the Government would abandon those businesses that wore unprofitable. He now follows this up with a series of confessions and warnings that are of the greatest importance not only to his own State but to the rest of Australasia. Queensland has long been held up to the world as a model of a Labour State. The Premier of that State now tells the people that he must obtain more revenue, and already Queenslanders pay more per head in taxation than any of their neighbours; that there must be no more expenditure on unprofitable ventures; and that the service necessary to the success of State enterprises has not been given. The official defence against the complaint that unprofitable State businesses were wasteful has been that they served the people indirectly. The railways opened up the country, and State meat business provided cheap food. Apparently this defence has been thrown aside, and the Labour Government has adopted the policy urged on it by its critics, that State enterprises should pay their way. "If the people whom they had set out to serve would not give the social service which was necessary to make a success of those ventures, then there was no policy left but for the Government to abandon those particular things until the people were willing to give the social service which was so essential." So says Mr. McCormack, and we take it that by "the people whom they had set out to serve" he means both the personnel of the State services and the public. At any rate he underlines one of these categories when he goes on to say that the direction of these businesses has been bad, and that inefficiency and lack of discipline existed on the railways. One is reminded of the remark that socialism will be possible only when men are perfect and then it will not be necessary. The Queensland Premier is not the fir=t Labour leader to be disappointed in human nature, but we cannot recall so candid a concession of the other side's case by another head of an Australian Labour Government. It is more than this; it is notice to the rank and file of Labour that the special privileges of the Labour voter in Queensland are to be severely curtailed. Largely because the Government has felt obliged to grant such privileges, and generally to move towards that ' condition of complete socialisation which is the objective of the Labour party, Queensland has for years past slid quickly down the slippery slope of reckless living. At the same time the Government has shown a timidity towards the more extreme elements in its following that has alarmed constitutionalists in Queensland and elsewhere. Now the call is to halt, and it will be interesting to see by how much speed will be checked, and whether the courage that the Government is showing in reorganising the finances will extend to the proper disciplining of the direct action men. \