The Press TUESDAY, MAY 13, 1947. Avon

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25182, 13 May 1947, Page 6

The Press TUESDAY, MAY 13, 1947. Avon

The electors of Avon, for a reason which is generally and sincerely deplored, find themselves, under the eyes of other electors from end to end of New Zealand, facing the responsibility of choosing a Parliamentary 'representative. Since the General Election in November, which proved so close a balance of voting strength between the Labour Party and the National Party and which gave the Government a barely workable and to-day uncertain majority, much has occurred to keep political tension high and to shift its stresses. Chiefly industrial events have had this effect. For example, although the Government established the Waterfront Industry Control Commission at the watersiders’ request and they and the employers accepted its working rules, the country has seen the Government first take a strong .stand, when the watersiders kicked the rules into Wellington Harbour, and then, when it found how heavy the watersiders’ boots really were, give way meekly and make a new one-man commission and a new set of rules. The Prime Minister, who spoke loudest for the Government when it supposed it could safely take a strong line, had nothing to say when it discovered its error and has had nothing to say on the subject since. But electors, including some who had not yet lost all faith in the Government six months

ago, have thought a great deal about it. They have been given other occasions for thought, as upon the Government’s dangerous readiness to announce, not merely that it was prepared to facilitate an application to the Arbitration Court for a general order increasing wages, but that it had examined the evidence supporting such an application and been convinced by it; as upon the Government's excessive zeal in promoting disputesettlement procedures which, whatever their ad hoc convenience and occasional necessity, cannot be used repeatedly without throwing the normal machinery out of gear; as upon the Government’s helplessness while the hold-up of the Wanganella repair job exhibits from week to week some fresh phase of disastrous lunacy; and, to take a last, instance, as upon the Prime Minister’s quarterdeck statement about the Bellona deserters. Here, as reported on Saturday, he was all confidence again, and ready to speak plainly of the Government’s “very “ grave view of the matter ”. Too confident, too ready: for the Prime Minister overdid it This matter, he said, “was not one in which the “ Government would feel any re- “ sponsibility to any section or or- “ ganisation other than to the people “of the Dominion ”. This matter is not one such. It follows, then, that there are matters in which the Government qualifies its responsibility to the people of the Dominion. “If at all times the whole people, “ whatever their political opinion, “ have a duty to the Government ”, Mr Charles Morgan wrote recently, referring to the political situation in Great Britain, “so have the Gov- “ ernment, whatever their political “ complexion, a duty to the whole “ people ”. If the electors of Avon need to be advised to consider one question, first and last, in this byelection campaign, it may well be that which the Prime Minister has himself defined. Electors have been given much cause, during the Government’s 11 years in office, to doubt its courage, its capacity, and its will to govern with an undivided sense of responsibility “to the whole “people”. Events during the last six months, not in the industrial field only, have deepened and spread those doubts. Avon can speak its mind on them so sharply as even to unseat the Government. It can, short of that, speak its mind with unmistakable and telling significance.