PRECEPT AND PRACTICE

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 145, 17 December 1934, Page 10

PRECEPT AND PRACTICE

Our Sydney representative remarks on the fact that while unification is a Labour principle, it is in the way of becoming a practice of the nonLabour parties that form the Federal Government. In the 6ame way it may be said that non-Socialist Governments in various parts of the world (including Ne>v Zealand) are enacting Socialism, The fact is that Governments are being forced along certain roads without having time to study the signposts. The State finance of Lang (New South Wales) was so disruptive that the other States gave the Commonwealth Government great powers per medium of tho Premiers' Plan and the Loan Council; thus the Lang danger forced the State Governments lo help to strike a blow for unification, though suicide was certainly not their intention. And now the plight, of the primary industries brings into being an Australian Agricultural Council, and unification again finds its sails filled by an economic sidewind. New Zealand fortunately has no unification problem. That was settled in the seventies. But Newj Zealand is heading—like Australia, by indirect routes-—for State or industrial Socialism, and such policy is being followed by those-who once promised business in government and no Government in business. Business in government is now seen to be a light comedy, and no Government in business is a broad farce. Practice is stronger than principle, and on principle issues there is hardly a Government today that knows whether it is going or coming.