The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATES The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1926. THE MADNESS OF MR. LANG.

Auckland Star, Volume 304, Issue 304, 23 December 1926, Page 6

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

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1926. THE MADNESS OF MR. LANG.

— ■ For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that tee can do.

With the help of the two wandering sheep who have at least temporarily returned to the Labour fold, Mr. Lang has been able to force through his Estimates at railroad speed. As the closure was applied, and, in the pathetic words of the Leader of the Opposition, discussion was a mere futility, the Government was able to get through the debate on the financial situation in record time, and then to invite the House to consider one of its highly controversial proposals, the newspaper tax. As regards the proposed newspaper tax, it is likely to hold pride of place iv Australia's constitutional records for many a year to come as a monument of iniquity and folly. There can be no doubt that, as Mr. Bavin has said, it has -been devised with the express purpose of injuring the great Sydney dailies which are almost without exception opposed to Mr. Lang; while the exemptions protect the smaller country papers whose aid Mr. Lang desires to secure. But the charges of tyranny and corruption do not exhaust criticism here. We have already discussed the question from the historical standpoint, and it is easy to show that the newspaper tax has everywhere in the past operated as a restriction on social, intellectual, and political freedom, and a bar to human progress, and it is this defunct, mediaeval monstrosity that Mr. Lang wishes to restore to life in Australia to-day. Apart from this topic, the chief interest in the debate centred round the Labour Government's loan proposals, and here again Mr. Lang displayed in a lurid light that curious mixture of ignorance, recklessness, and irresponsibility which in his case apparently does duty for statesmanship. In the first place, he demands the right to place loans "in such countries or cities as the Governor-in-Council may direct," and he justifies this innovation on the ground that "the London money market is not as sympathetic as it might be to any Dominion or colonial borrowing." As to the reasons for this coy reluctance on the part of the money market, Mr. Lang apparently said little, but, characteristically enough, he let the House and the rest of the world into the secret when almost in the same breath he proclaimed the necessity for the establishment of a sinking fund. Needless to say, Mr. Lang produces this sinking fund expedient as if it were an original invention, to be credited entirely to his own financial ingenuity. The fact, of course, is that not only Mr. Bavin and the Opposition, but all other competent critics, whether friends or foes, of Mr. Lang, have been for years past urging the Labour Government to take this obvious and indispensable step. Everybody knows that the various States of the Commonwealth are heavily in debt, but few people valise how little they have done to prepare for the ultimate liquidation of their liabilities. New South Wales is not only by far the heaviest borrower in the list, but it also holds the record for the microscopic size of its sinking fund, even when compared with such financially weak and discredited States as Queensland, and Tasmania. The figures, as they appear in the Commonwealth Year Book for 1925, are well worthy of consideration. Strange to say, West Australia holds the palm for careful finance, for, with a gross debt of £63,000,000, she has accumulated over £9,000,000 of sinking fund. South Australia owes £70,000,000, and has a sinking fund of £2,500,000. Victoria owes £124,000,000, and has a sinking fund of £3,500,000. Tasmania owes £24,000,000, and has sayed £1,000,000 to meet the bill;,and Queensland, with a gross debt of over £190,000,000, has about £1,000,000 in peservp for the

same purpose. Above all these figures, New South Wales towers high in lonely ■"splendour, with a gross public debt of about £224,000,0000, and a sinking fund of less than half a million! What further explanation is required to interpret the diffidence of the London money market, and its failure to respond to Mr. Lang's appeals? And what further argument is needed to sustain the charges of incapacity and folly levelled by Mr. Bavin at the Labour Government's financial policy? As to the proposal to borrow in America, it is quite possible that Mr. Lang has never considered the industrial and commercial effects of the great inrush of American goods that would inevitably follow, and the sacrifice of Australian and British interests that such a policy would sooner or later entail.