THE AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL SITUATION.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 522, 1 June 1909, Page 6

THE AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL SITUATION.

Fuller information is to hand by i the' mail respecting tho new, situation that has boen created in Australian politics by tho fusion of tho moderate parties in a coalition against the Fisher' Government. At this.-distance the new coalition i 8 visible as the protest of Parliament against the domination o£ Labour Socialism, and the wonder is that we did not all recognise, that an end was bound/to come to tjie three-party system through the awakening of Parliament's conscience to its grave impropriety. The beginning of the Federation ranged into opposition the hightariff and low-tariff parties, and it was not long before the Labour party, to which the tariff was'by no means the most important political issue, recognised its opportunity. From then until last week' the history of Federal politics has been a history of ignoble bargains, and permanent government by one minority or another. Every Government depended for its existence, on the fact that the two minorities out of power were in opposition to each other. The fusion that has now .been accomplished would haVe come about more quickly had it not been that the extreme bitterness of the tariff , struggle had, led the non-Labour parties to inflict deep and rankling wounds upon' each other. * It would not have been accomplished even now. were it not that the Labour party, again in power, had determined to trust, in its own strength to crush its Liberal friends, a course which seemed safe in view of what Labour mistakenly thought was a cpnvcniontly 'unbridgeable gulf between the other parties. Had the Government shown a disposition to give to the Deakin Liberals as much as it obtained from thorn, it would have been in office to-day. ■ -

When the leaderß of the Opposition parties, Sir John Forrest and Me. Joseph Cook, met Ms. Deakin in conference, they found that their differences were susceptible to compromise, and wore in any case dot so great as to warrant the maintenance of an antagonism that kept in povror a Government distasteful to them all. The policy agreed upon deals in its cardinal points with the tariff, dofonco, finance, and tho now, protection. Tho tariff is to remain intact, anomalies being rectified from the protectionist standpoint in accordanco with tW established policy of tho country. The financial policy is one that will safeguard tho needs of tho Commonwoalth without unnecessarily depleting the State treasuries—a policy that is directly counter to that which a Labour Government would cortainly seek to carry out, namely, tho deprivation of the States of the rights that they now enjoy and tho establishment of the Federation as the complete master of the continent's treasury. Mn. Deakin's defence proposals aim at universal train-" ing up to the age of 21 years, and a naval dcfence schcmo which will secure home defence "in such a way as to fit in with the necessities of Empire." Tho only difficulty exporienccd by tho coalescing parties on this point had reference to the ago-limit for compulsory training. It is proposed to provide an Inter-State Commission to have appellate jurisdiction to

harmonise, and federalist! awards under the Excise Act in order to securo uniform industrial conditions throughout the Commonwealth. •

In deciding to break finally frith the Labour party Mit. Dbakin has dono a very courageous thing. He was fully aware that he would be assailed by criticism of the kind which Sik William Lym crystallises into a frantic howl of "Judas!" He has trusted, however, to the cool judgmentof the people, which ho expects to recognise the propriety of his action, as a Liberal, in dissociating himself from Labour after a full trial of its capacity to servo the advancement of Liberalism. It has doubtless come as the rudest of shocks to the Labour party to find that men have been deciding that it is consonant neither with the dignity nor the well-being of Australia that a majority shall not r'ulo its affairs. That ia what was at the root of the movement that has ended in the coalition, that and the natural dismay of all sensible <nen at the prospect of the finances and the general' administration of the Commonwealth be,ing_ disorganised along the lines of Socialist ignorance. It would bo surprising if on an appeal being made to the country, the verdict of the electorates were not even more strongly in favour of majority rule than the coalition Government could reasonably hope.