POLITICIANS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 72, 27 March 1937, Page 12

POLITICIANS.

CHURCH CRITICISMS. AUSTRALIAN REFERENDUM. MRS. EARLE PAGE'S DEFENCE. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, Marcn 19. Tn many of our churches the Sunday sermons contain references to current events and political affairs., and our public men are frequently subjected to criticism of a decidedly frank nature. One of our leading preachers is the Rev. T. E. Ruth, who draw? large gatherings weekly to the Pitt Street Congregational Church. On Sunday last he dealth with the and while endeavouring to account for the defeat of the Federal proposals he attributed the adverse vote to "a feeling of antagonism not toward the Commonwealth but toward men who have lost the confidence of the community." In addition there was. in the speaker's opinion, "a feeling of uncertainty as to how they would use any additional power when they had apparently lost the sense of responsibility to those that they represented."

This general indictment Mr. Ruth supported with a large amount of detailed criticism. "They do not minister to our necessities," he complained. "They are servants who become dictators— bureaucratic while we remain democratic. The whole range of our public and private life is so overrun by them, and their overhead, underfoot and oversea expenses are so heavy that the most loyal citizens of the Commonwealth— overburdened by direct and indirect taxation—wonder if the whole social system will not soon crack up under the strain of an always luxurious and sometimes superfluous legislation."

With all those things before his eyes the defeat of the referendum meant to Mr. Ruth simply the refusal of the people of Australia "to barter away the spirit of independence and what remains of the blood-bought liberties of their British heritage."

It is evident that, stripped of superfluous verbiage. Mr. Ruth's charges only meant that most people voted "No" on March 6 because they do not trust politicians and they think that we a-e overgoverned already. This is quite a tenable position to take up: but considering the incisive tone of Mr. Ruth's comments it is not remarkable that some of our public men or their friends were inclined to give the clergyman's remirks a etronglv personal application and to resent these charges accordingly. Woman's Loyal Defence. But it was perhaps unfortunate that the most noteworthy answer to Mr. Ruth's challenge came from the wife of Dr. Karle Pajre. For it was practically impossible for Mrs. Page to take a wholly impartial view of her husband's political career and equally impossible for her to dissociate herself fiom the political and economic implications of the referendum. Everyone who read her letter to the "Herald" must have sympathised with her courageous and loyal defence of Dr. Page as "one who has served his country both here and abroad with a single eye and much sacrifice."

Mrs. Page is also on firm ground when she makes the claim that many men take up political life actuated by lofty ideals, giving not a thought to personal aggrandisement or material gain. Further, there is something in her contention that the amount of money spent upon our political representatives in the form of salaries is "less per head of the population than many men spend on tobacco each week." She contends forcibly that the amount of public money expended on a Ministerial trip to England may be but a small percentage of the .total gains accruing to the country through the successful handling of her commercial and industrial and financial interests abroad.

But the sympathy that she has thus secured is liable to be heavily discounted by any reader who learns in the next sentence from Mrs. Page, that the! referendum was submitted to the people] simply because the Government was j anxious to preserve the just rights and liberties of "the man on the land." Interests of the Nation. This view of the referendum identifies Mrs. Page—and presumably her husband —with those sectionalists who apparently do not regard the interests of the nation as "one and indivisable," but hold that it is the dutyof the Government if necessary to sacrifice the comfort and well-being of all other classes to farmers and settlers and primary producers generally. Here Mrs. Page has shut her eyes to the >main issue, and has for the moment degenerated into a prejudiced partisan of the narrowest and most limited kind.; and her championship of politicians in general and her husband in particular, suffers accordingly. In all probability both Mr. Ruth and Mrs. Page have left unsaid much that is essential to the right understanding of politicians and their ways. But while one may agree with Mrs. Page that there is something admirable in the devotion to the public well being that marks the career and the personal character of many of our politicians, there is much to be said for the view of one of the correspondents, who continued the controversy, by suggesting that many people voted "'So" because it was only in this way that they could express appropriately their resentment at the heavy taxation and the limitation of liberty which the present political system inflicts upon us all.