STILL IN SUSPENSE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXII, Issue 47, 24 August 1911, Page 7

STILL IN SUSPENSE.

POLITICS IN AUSTRALIA. (From Our Own Correspondent.) 0 SYD-NEY, 19th August. Politically, the Mother State continues to make all the running in the Commonwealth.' Federal members have not come together yet. The South Australia' Assembly cannot find anything to quarrel about save thei Verran (Labour) Government's loud hurrah, at the clipping of the claws of the Lords. Queens*? land is fairly quiescent, and the othet States are not making much political nflise, but the turmoil and din and 'swift I transitions, in New South Wales are sufficient to amuse or exasperate the whole continent. After weeks of suspense with 'almost balanced parties! fol« [ lowed, by the resignations of the Labour 1 majority, the recantation of half of it I (Mr. Dunn), and the appeal to tho rural electorates of Mudgee and Liv£r< jppol Plains to confer the coveted mar* gin on either Labour or the Liberals, the court is found to be evenly divided. All that has transpired is a Yes«No verdict, Liverpool Plains saying Liberal and Mudgee saying Labour. The Assembly is evenly divided ; that is to say, 'in a House of ninety, Labour holds forty-five pledged seats (assuming that Cob&r, accidentally disfranchised, again returns the invalid Chief Secretary, Donald Maedonald) and tlw remaining members are inferentially Opposition. Only inferentially, however. For already Mr. Henry Willis, a so-called Wadeite Liberal, has accepted Labour's gift of the Speakership. So, apart from the Speaker, there are- forty-five Labour members, and forty-four who, still infefefltially, are Opposition. WILLIS, CHAIR-WARMER. Ak Chair- warmer for the Labour Party, Mr# Willis contends that he is serving bota hte Liberal brethren and the co«atry. Ai\;r suggestion that he has greedily grasped a bauble is loftily ignored. To Libef&lj who a&alhematifce him, h« says that h» has stipulated that during the contemplated short session the Labonr Government shall pass only nonconuattiwift measures, and nothing to injure Liberalism. To the country generally ha poses as the disinterested peajott who enables the Parliamentary machinery k< mark tame or proceed dead sb*vahfla.d. until such date ac the redistribution of seats is completed, ailovrittg of >«ppeu! to the coitotry on 8' proper representative basis, iiwtead of the double c&fefc of an immediate appeal on iuiequ.ii electorates,' with a second gonero! election a few months later. All this is not' lacking in plausibility, but there are. rocks aht-ad. PP c art of tb& Government's pact with Mr. Wiliw is the passing of th* Badget and «H© Estimates, in connection with which the Government has foreshadowed increased taxation which the Opposition will firmly oppose. An increase in the Estimates is inevitable, because of tho expansion of actttal_ expenditure and the Government's immediate commitments, and where is the extra money to com© f row 'i Either the Government must present the increased Estimates and trust to- the ordi&ary, teygaiw Jiang Jo -Ahu .pecanon,

or else Mr. Willis must accept tho new taxes at the cost of a Straining of his political conscience as to the interpretation of "non-contentious." And so with other measures that the Government will no doubt try to pass during this "marking -time" sesuion. Again, a-9 to "protecting his party's interests," ttfe chair-wawaer, while keeping the Goverflment in office, apparently forgets that, though he has stipulated that a brake -(effective or otherwise) shall be placed on legislation, he lias, do fat, said nothing about a curb en administration, What can he done in this du«ectiort is shown by the activity of Ministers since they won from the LieutenantGovernor the prorogation. They have appointed a Rcysl Commissione? to report on the iron industry, behind which is a polilic'tl foe. They have promised £280.000 worth of work (harbour and railway building) to the electorate of a monibef oi the Opposition (Democrat section), who noeasiotlally lends them his vote. And just prior to those rural by-elections they increased the subsidy to single-family schools in the wayback, and evolved a portable school building te acct-mpaay .the railwaybdi'ldfiti' camp. Thcso Labour Minister* know something.