AUSTRALIAN POLITICS MR GORTON DOES LITTLE TO IMPROVE HIS IMAGE

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31628, 14 March 1968, Page 12

AUSTRALIAN POLITICS MR GORTON DOES LITTLE TO IMPROVE HIS IMAGE

(By the Australian correspondent of the “Financial Times,” London) (Reprinted from the “Financial Times” by arrangement) It is necessary to wait for more evidence of the real determination and power of Mr John Gorton, the Australian Prime Minister, before deciding how he will move.

In the early days, before he was elected, he made some strong statements about the need to restrain the growth of defence spending and about his determination severely to limit Australia’s overseas defence responsibilities and commitments. These statements were welcomed by many within the Commonwealth Civil Service who have become increasingly worried about the impact of the current high rate of growth of defence spending on the nation's potential economic growth. Mediocre Reshuffle

But in this, as in so many other matters, together with the mediocrity of his Ministerial reshuffle, and his early capitulations ’to Mr McEwen, the Deputy Prime Minister, have made it necessary to look beyond the public relations image to the reality of John Gorton, which to date is much less powerful and much less imaginative than the image-makers have led us to believe since he made his quick rise to power earlier this year. The announcement by Mr Gorton of his long-awaited reshuffle has in fact come as a sharp anti-climax and has inevitably led to questioning about the true ability of such a political dark horse. He made very few significant changes and the weeks of waiting for his “new look” Ministry have not been handsomely rewarded.

He has promoted a couple of awkward backbenchers— Mr William Wentworth, in the House of Representatives and Senator Reginald Wright —to Ministerial rank in a manoeuvre which has looked the obvious way of dealing with these two mavericks for years. He has also given one of the two pretenders to the throne of Leader of the Country Party—Mr lan Sinclair, Mr McEwen’s special favourite for the succession—the increasingly important portfolio of Shipping and Transport. Second Concession In this move, Mr Gorton has made his second major concession to Mr McEwen in as many weeks. The first was his decision to allow Mr McEwen to “stack” the redistribution commissions with nominees of Country Party Ministers so that the Country Party voice would be represented on the Commissions themselves to a disproportionate and entirely untraditional extent.

The Country Party has thus won an important concession from Mr Gorton on a matter of vital interest to its overall plan to continue and if

possible enlarge the gerry mander which allows the Country Party, with only about 9 per cent of the popular vote, to obtain some 17 per cent of the seats in the House of Representatives. Now Mr Gorton has followed the stacking of the distribution commissions with the allocation of the portfolio of Shipping and Transport to a senior Country Party Minister who has also been brought into the inner Cabinet. In addition, the Country Party now controls the Department of Trade, and the Department of Primary Industry. Two Dismissed For the rest, Mr Gorton’s new Ministry smacks little of change or excitement. A couple of unsatisfactory Ministers, who got into trouble, have been sacked. Mr Peter Howson, the former Minister for Air who got the Govern ment into trouble—or so it could be argued—over the VIP aircraft incident and over the escalating cost of the F-111, has been dismissed, as has the former Minister of the Navy, Mr Don Chipp, who had the misfortune to be associated as a Minister with the inquiries into the Voyager disaster.

The banality of his Ministerial changes will detract from the impression Mr Gorton has been trying to create that he is a rather adventurous Prime Minister who was anxious to try new ideas such as reforming the administration of social sei vices to give much more to the really poor

and take the emphasis away from just giving money to all and sundry; evaluating much more critically and with a much closer eye to co-ordin-ating efforts within the Commonwealth Government and between the Commonwealth and the States in the area of national development, in such matters as transport, water and agriculture; keeping a very tight rein on the growth of defence spending and fighting shy of any further commitment of Australian forces to the war in Vietnam. A Hard Fight It is now clear Mr Gorton is going to have to fight very hard against powerfully entrenched forces if he is to have any success at all in these rather bold ideas which he was tossing out in his early days as Prime Minister. He has already found that he cannot move very quickly at all in any direction, even if he seriously intended to do so.

This tendency to lapse into banality has certainly not been forced upon Mr Gorton by any suggestions that he may have suffered some reverse in, for instance, the ballot boxes, since he came to power. The opposite is true. Last week-end the Liberal Government in New South Wales was returned to power with a substantially increased majority and Mr Gorton himself succeeded in substantially improving on the majority recorded by Mr Holt in the last election before he was killed.