Evening Post FRIDAY, MAY 10,1935. CAN MRS. GRUNDY SAVE MR. LANG ?

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 109, 10 May 1935, Page 6

Evening Post FRIDAY, MAY 10,1935. CAN MRS. GRUNDY SAVE MR. LANG ?

No one has ever suspected the Stevens-Bruxner Government, New South Wales, of being a friend of starting-price bookmakers, tin hares, and gamblers. Nevertheless, it has been about as tolerant of the hold that gambling and indulgence maintain, on a section of democracy, as is to be expected from an average Government. It.'did not prescribe a minimum bathing dress until various surfing authorities had dodged away from that task, and had made it plain that such restriction was "a responsibility of the National Government." No one who takes a broad view of the situation would have any doubt on the point that the mission of the Stevens-Bruxner Government is not anti-gambling, nor anti-nudism, nor anti-book-making, but simply to effect economic recovery by a policy of prudence contrasting with the profligacy of the late Lang Government. Therefore, when Mr. Lang seeks to escape the main issue by indicting the bathing dress and other Government restrictions as Mrs. Grundyism, he is confessing political bankruptcy, and is seeking a win on a plausible side issue. The bathing dress has nothing to do with economic recovery, but it has one advantage over economics—it is' something 'that every voter can understand.. The same cannot be said of the Premiers' Plan or even of the flour tax and the price of bread. In Wednesday's issue our Australian correspondent reviews the Lang effort to win tomorrow's election by this tilt at the windmill of "wowserism." There may be party money in it, but if there are votes in it one might well despair of the capacity of civilisation to work out, through democracy, its economic salvation. Much more interesting than Lang Labour's, window-dressing are the events within' the movement itself. This year the Easter Conference, under Mr. Lang?s control, was rushed through, so quickly that at least one delegate arrived when all was over. Its most notable, and most significant, act was to take away from the Labour caucus (the meeting of the Labour members of Parliament to be held after the new Parliament is elected tomorrow) the power to elecj: their leader. Thus Mr. Lang, by control of the Labour machine, retains the leadership, and one of his chief Labour opponents (Mr. J. F. Higgins, secretary of the opposing Labour section, known as Federal Labour) comments:

Mr. Lang does not dare to put the test of, his leadership to a vote of his own caucus. He can already again scent disaster at the polls, and has, in effect, asked his hand-picked Easter Conference to save him from his Parliamentary followers. Brandishing its axe, the inner group has virtually decreed that Mr. Lang must govern the' party until the crack of doom.

Out of this Labour war springs a lively duel in Mr. Lang's own constituency, Auburn, where his seat in Parliament is challenged by Mr. J. B. Chifley, Federal Labour Leader in New South Wales. Mr. Higgins claims that many of the Langites themselves secretly wish Mr. Chifley success.

Mr. Lang's defeat would bring about the end of inner group domination, the movement would be restored'to its democratic basis, and the big'stumb-ling-block to'unity would be removed. Mr. Lang is the one man in the party who can stop the political pendulum swinging back to the Labour Party. By clinging to his leadership he is placing many otherwise safe Labour seats in jeopardy. ... Mr. Chifiey bears a stainless Labour record, and was Minister of Defence in the Federal Government which was betrayed by the Lang faction.

So much for Lang Labour as seen through the spectacles of the other Labour. Seen through any spectacles, the pre-election action of the Labour Conference in taking the election of leader out of the hands of the caucus cannot appear to be other than a grasping of power

by the controllers of the parLy machine. To say that the elected may not elect their leader is to stultify the electors themselves. On the platform, Mr. Lang says "trust the people." But he will not trust the trusted of the people or allow them to review his own stewardship. No wise man ever predicts the result of an election. So far as they can see into the minds of the electors, Australian writers seem to expect that tomorrow the Governments of the two election-holding States— New South Wales and Queensland (Labour) —will both be returned. The Stock Exchange reflects no nervousness on this prospect. No doubt it would do so if there was an anticipation of a majority for Mr. Lang; and to say that is also to say that Australia draws a marked distinction between Lang Labour and Labour as it operates in other States, including Queensland. There has not been time to forget the closing of the New South Wales Savings Bank, and Mr. Lang's proposed tax on mortgage capital; or, if these things should be found to be forgotten by the elector, they would be remembered rapidly by all owners of property and savings, should they have the misfortune to wake up on Monday to find a Lang Government in prospect. Possibly the difference between Mr. Lang and Mr. Tunnecliffe sufficiently accounts for the closeness of the co-operation of the United Australia and the Country Parties in New South Wales, and the sagging and final collapse of the U.A.P.-Country Party co-operation in Victoria. Tomorrow in New South Wales, unlike Victoria, the advantages of unity wilLbe with the Stevens-Bruxner parries and the handicaps of disunity with the Labour sections. Labour disunity in that State has now existed for a very long time. It has had much to do with principles, even more with personality. Mr. Lang is a political Alexander with a world to conquer. Within the machine, as the short Easter Conference finally proves, he is at present unconquerable. If he is to be conquered, a decisive blow must'be struck in the political field, and that lies with the electors. They are voting tomorrow not merely on a State issue but on one which affects the whole future of the Labour Party, and therefore of the whole Commonwealth.