VICTORIAN STATE ASSEMBLY

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26039, 16 February 1950, Page 5

VICTORIAN STATE ASSEMBLY

GOVERNMENT FACES CRISIS (Rec. 7 p.m. MELBOURNE, Feb. 15. Two rebel Government members of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, Messrs J. S. Lechte, and F. L. Edmunds, have been expelled from the Parliamentary Liberal Party ■on the motion of the State Premier (Mr T. T. Hollway).

The Government now has only 30 members, including the Speaker, in a Legislative Assembly of 65. It would need the support of at least three members of the Country Party to avoid a defeat.

The leader of the State Labour Party (Mr J. Cain) has demanded the immediate dissolution of Parliament and a General Election.

Mr Hollway refused to comment on a report that he would ask the Governor (Sir Reginald Dallas Brooks) for a dissolution in a few weeks’ time, rather than risk a defeat on the floor of the Assembly when it reassembled in April. The expelled members will sit in the Assembly as unendorsed Liberals.

Austrians Cancel Demonstration. — The Vienna correspondent of the British United Press says that a joint demonstration of protest by both Houses of the Austrian Parliament against the delay in completing the Austrian peace treaty has been cancelled. It had been arranged to hold the demonstration to-day. No reason was given for the cancellation.—London, February 15.