FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1911.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 40, 17 February 1911, Page 6

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1911.

t-' LABOUR iU POLITICS. | o ] The nature of the Labour Conferencewhich opened in Sydney on the 26th ult. and concluded its deliberations on Wednesday has not been easy to decipher from the cablegrams which have reached us from lime to time upon tho subject. At the outset we were not told, whether it represented the Federal La~ .bour Party or -merely that of th© State.of New South Wales, and subsequent messages had led us to infer that both, #these parties .were holding conferences concurrently or in succession. The letter from our Australian correspondent which we published yesterday has, however, mad© it clear that there was only on© conference, and that th© Labour organisations of the State alone were represented at it. As described by the vivid pen of our correspondent, it was a remarkable gathering. The number of accredited delegates was about three hundred, and it says much for the vitality of Labour politics in New faouih Wales that so large- a number should, have assembled from all pajrts of the State, and that even a working quorum was found to attend to the business for three- consecutive weeks. The deliberations of the conference do not appear to have, been straitened by the tyranny of a rigid code of standing orders or of an exacting chairman. Simultaneous debates in different parts 1 of the hall were by no means uncommon; interruptions were-"frequent and free" ; andi?here*was an engaging air- of unchaxtered liberty about -the whole business, which recalls in our correspondent's interesting narrative the famous Mr. Dooley's memorable, description of a Populist Convention. , But while conveying a picturesque impression of the free-and-easy style of the whole proceedings, and of the ignorance of the- rudiments of political learning displayed by many of the speakers, our correspondent does full justice to the invincible good sens© of the greater number. "The strong common-sens© of the majority and the practised ability of a fow made short work," he says, "of most of tho nonsense as soon as it was expressed." In some directions the conference got out of hand, but on the whole it took the line which was indicated by the experience and skill of its leaders. This generally favourable verdict of a perfectly candid critic seems to us to be fully borne out by the final results of the conference, w&icb. have reached us by cable since the date of our correspondent's letter. There is a considerable amount of vagueness about some of tie plunks in ihe fighting platform adopted by the conference at its last sitting, and some of these may represent the concessions which had to be made to the unbalanced' enthusiasm of the insurgents. But on the whole the platform is far from visionary or revolutionary, and t?oes little to justify the jeremiads of Mr. >Wade and his colleagues. It looks as though the responsibilities of office were having the sobering effect upon the party in New South Wales of which the Federal Labour Party had previously reaped the benefit from its earlier accession to power. With the consciousness of power and responsibility it is natural that the, conferences of the party should emerge from the debating society stage into that of a practical and businesslike Labour Parliament. We note, accordingly, a pleasing absence from the fighting platform of such sweeping and time-honour-ed generalities as the nationalisation oi' tha means of production, distribution, and exchange. Even the nationalisation of the land does not find' a place. A motion to give land nationalisation the second place on the platform was rejected, and the defeat of the -motion appears to have carried with it tho total rejection of the proposal, and not the mere ■subordination of it to claims deemed to be more urgent. Instead of a vague and remote demand of this kind, we find a. series of eminently sensiblo demands for land reform of a practical character. Like <rar own Labour Party, the Labour Party of New South Wales

asked, for "the cessation of further sales of Crown lands." The action of the Ministry in advertising Crown lands for sale had been severely criticised at an -earlier stage of the proceedings, and the Minister of Lands only escaped a direct vote of censure by the substitution of an .amendment which was politer in its terms bufc not very different in its purport. To prevent the denationalisation of the •'public estate by stopping the further sal© of Crown land is an infinitely wiser and -more effective procedure than to pass wholesale resolutions in favour of land "nationalisation, which, at the best, could 'not take effect until practically all the Crown land that it was worth anybody's while to buy had gone. The morevigorous prosecution of land settlement and the-graduated land tax are also eminently practical measures, to "which the M'Gowen Government may b© expected "to pay prompt attention. The only kind of nationalisation on the programme is '-the nationalisation of coal mines. — a proposal ■which, if given a limited and tentative application, might reasonably be isupported by the more advanced section iof the present Opposition. The most far--reaching of the proposals of the conference are concerned with constitutional 'reform. "Electoral reform" is good, but so vague as to convey a minimum of 'definite meaning. "Proper machinery •for the true representation, of the people An Parliament" is entitled to the same praise, and is liable to the same objection. We trust that the latter proposal may include disapproval of the Second Ballot Act^ which was carried at the. 'instance of~the Wade Ministry just before dissolution. Tasmania's success with ia more scientific system of representation, will, we trust, induce other States to .follow her example. The abolition of •th© Legislative Council and the substitution of tlie popular initiative and referendum\ are the only proposals in tho fighting programme ol the conference which, appear to us to be definitely dangerous. -Two chambers are better than one, evens though they both make mistakes. Not ■•abolition, but a drastic reform, which will bring it into direct touch with the ■people, is the medicine that the Legislative Council of New South Wales, like --that of New Zealand, really needs.