LABOUR IN POLITICS

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 102, 24 January 1933, Page 8

LABOUR IN POLITICS

Queensland’s Former Premier

Visits New Zealand

‘TALLIATIVE MEASURES”

Having retired from the political arena three years ago, Mr. W. McCormack, of Sydney, a former Premier of Queensland, has no intention of returning to the fray. He arrived from Sydney yesterday by the Maunganui, and although he told “The Dominion” a good deal about the Australian Labour movement and the New Zealand Labour movement, he preferred that his views should not be published. Nevertheless, he believes that when a Labour Government gets into power it adopts “palliative” measures and cannot act very differently from a non-Labour Government which may have preceded it. He has noticed also that in countries such as New Zealand, where Labour has not been in power, the platform of the Labour Party aims at socialism to a far greater extent than a Labour Government in office. Mr. McCormack’s account of the rise and fall of the Labour Party in Australia was extremely interesting. When

in power, he said, Labour had' been more of the Liberal-Labour kind, or the Seddon kind, than anything else. With palliative measures and by a policy which was really a temporising one, Labour had been able to carry on with the machine, to the control of which it had been elected. But when the depression came it was powerless to continue in the same way. The breakdown of the machine was beyond its control. In reality, Mr. McCormack said, the policy of the Australian Labour movement during its happier years had had a large element of Fabianism. Here in New Zealand, on the other hand, the platform of the Labour Party had been in the past a far more definitely socialistic one.

Mr. McCormack entered politics in Queensland In 1912, and for 15 years was Minister and Premier. From 191519 he was Speaker of the Assembly; from. 1919-23, Home Secretary; from 1923-25, Secretary for Public Lands; and from 1925-29, Premier, Chief Secretary, and treasurer. The, present Premier,' the Hon. W. Forgan Smith, of Queensland, was one of his Ministers. In Queensland at the present time, he said, things were in very much the game position as in other countries. The most serious problem was unemploymtent, and to meet it the Government had adopted much the same measures as in New Zealand and elsewhere —a wages tax of 1/- in the £1 and a system of relief work. On'top of this a severe- dry spell in the sheep country was causing a great deal of anxiety.