The Press MONDAY, JUNE 28, 1943. General Election In Australia

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23985, 28 June 1943, Page 4

The Press MONDAY, JUNE 28, 1943. General Election In Australia

Mr Curtin’s decision to dissolve and appeal to the electors is not inconsistent with the view he had steadily expressed up to a few days ago, that he should carry on while he could. The Opposition no-confidence motion signalled a challenge and, for the future, a Parliamentary attitude in correspondence with it, Mr Curtin has already described the difficulties of working with a majority that hangs on one or two independent votes, and the waste of time and purpose that these conditions involve. Against an aggressive Opposition, the Government would find them crippling. Second, the Opposition majority in the Senate has just emphasised its power and its hostility again by rejecting the Government’s measure enfranchising all members of the armed forces. To legislate and to administer legislation in such circumstances would in normal times, be an almost hopeless task: to-day, it ought not to be at-' tempted. If Mr Curtin is confident of securing a mandate and a safe working majority, it must be mainly because he trusts the Government’s war record, which is, to a great extent through his own share in it, Dr. Evatt’s, and Mr Forde’s, a good one. It has been suggested that it would not, help him much to win a dearmajority in the Lower House without at the same time gaining enough seats to command the Senate, which is less likely: but, unwise as the tactics of the Opposition majority in the Senate have sometimes been, it is difficult to believe that it would be so unwise, if a majority still, as to obstruct a Government with a new and clear mandate. The greatest danger, from this point of view, is rather that the election will not effectually change the situation in the Lower House. But if the Government’s greatest hope is in its war record, the main charges against it, and thg ones hardest to answer, emerge from the same source. If Australia’s manpower, material, and financial mobilisation has made tremendous progress in the last 21 months; if Australia is more or less secure against invasion instead of in deadly danger; and if the Curtin Government is going to make much of all this, it has much, also, to explain away. For example, the Government’s record in handling labour and labour disputes is deplorable; and Mr Curtin is about to invite the judgment of the electors upon it just after his Minister of Labour, Mr Ward, has told a union conference that he had barely been able to tolerate the Government’s severity! Again, the rationing scheme, badly mishandled at the start by the ingenious Mr Dedman, is still being mishandled. Again, public opinion has undoubtedly been startled by the disclosure that food production has been muddled, and that, if this is the worst proof of short-sightedness / and confusion in manpower policy, it is not the only one. Again, some Ministers have allowed it to be seen that they regard war controls as the foundation of to-morrow’s socialism. Others have done their best, or worst to irritate Australians with bureaucratic zeal. The moods and attitudes of the Federal Treasurer, finally, have won the Government no friends, even when its actions have been wise; and that has not been always. If there is a risk of a “ dirty elec- “ tion,” therefore, as both Mr Menzies and Mr Hughes nave Predieted, it must be supposed to lie in the fact that, while the Government has grave failures in war-time administration to cover the temptation to bury them under Opposition crimes, with monuments to thfe Government’s glory on top, will be very great. The discreditable use of the .Brisbane Line story is one sign. Mr Curtin’s declaration, unworthy of him, that his Government inherited a “defeatist” home defence plan, is another. This risk can be avoided, however, and should be, if there is honesty at Canberra, It is on the staunchness and soundness of the people [said the ‘‘Sydney Morning Herald” on June 16] that the Government, whatever its complexion after the polls, will have to rely in the stern and painful period of offensive war in the Pacific. A nation debauched by the most shameless type of electioneering, distracted by a “dirty” political campaign, would be in poor shape to carry on the only fight that matters—the fight for survival as a tree, white race on the fringes of Asia.

The responsibility lies evenly on Mr Curtin and his chief and on Mr Fadden, Mr' Hughes, Mr Menzies, and theirs.