LOOMING AHEAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 81, 7 April 1931, Page 7

LOOMING AHEAD.

FEDERAL ELECTION.

Senate Rejection of Fiduciary

Bill Likely Cause.

"THE SOONER THE BETTER."

(United P.A.—Electric Telegraph—Copyright)

(Received 11 a.m.)

SYDNEY, this day.

Commenting on the remark made by the Prime Minister, Mr. J. H. Scullin, at the Federal Labour Conference at Melbourne to the effect that should the Fiduciary Currency Bill be rejected by the Senate he would at once go to the country, the Opposition leader, Mr. J. G. Latham, said he had no doubt that that body would reject the bill.

A Hobart message says that Mr. J. A. Lyons, -who resigned from the Federal Cabinet recently, stated: "The sooner we go to the country the better. From our standpoint we have felt for a long time that the Government has absolutely lost the confidence of the people of the Commonwealth."

IMPOSSIBLE.

Reconciliation ef N.S.W. State

And Federal Labour.

LANG PLAN CONDEMNED.

In a bitter attack on the State A.L.P. executive, which is accused of trying to set up a dictatorship in Australia, and in trying to wreck the Labour party, the A.W.U. says that reconciliation of the two factions is impossible. The Lang plan is attacked violently as "no plan at all," but only an attempt to divert attention from the real issues.

"The State executive," says the A.W.TX., in an important statement just issued, "has attempted to fasten a dictatorship on the Australian Labour party, and compel its adherence to a *plan' in the formation of which it was not even -consulted. „

"Nothing could be more deplorable than the situation which has developed in New South Wales. •

"The quarrel between the Federal Labour party and the executive of this State has been aggravated to such a degree that a reconciliation seems out of the question, and an internecine struggle unavoidable. 1 Like a Bomb. "The prospects of , peace receded when Mr. Lang flung his 'plan' like a bomb into the Federal ranks, and the position became so critical that it needed but a single unfriendly move on either side to-precipitate a fratricidal war.

"The State executive was apparently not impressed by the dangers of the outlook. A Federal by-election was pending. ' "Contemptuously casting aside the policy enunciated by the Federal executive—which conformed to the Labour platform* and to Labour principles—it decided that the election must be fought upon the Lang 'plan' and refused to permit anybody to speak for the Labour candidate who did not accept that plan and advocate it.

-'To Provoke Breach.' "Such an attitude was intolerable. It was arrogantly unreasonable, and could only be regarded as inspired by a deliberate intention to provoke a breach with the Federal body. \

"The A.L.P., being essentially Federal in character, must be governed by a Federal authority. ' That it should be subject to sectional decisions is logically unthinkable.

"The New South Wales executive has rent the movement in twain. There are two Labour parties in Canberra, and the hostility between them is_ so acute that an early election seems inevitable." Referring to the Lang plan, ,tlie A.W.U. says: "The Lang plan is not a plan at all. It denotes the absence of a. plan. "To deliberately fail to pay one's debts is such an old idea it almost certainly originated in the earliest stages of human evolution.

Not Statesmanship. "It does not call for statesmanship or for any mental exertion worth mentioning. . . . The A.L.P., as distinct from the executive body in New South Wales, will have nothing to do with such a device, and this attitude is in complete harmony with both the letter and spirit of the great Labour movement. "He plea that it is being done for the unemployed will not convince anybody who thinks the matter out in its many ramifications. Instead of diminishing unemployment, its inevitable result would be largely to increase -it."