FEDERAL ELECTIONS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 87, 9 October 1937, Page 8

FEDERAL ELECTIONS

GOVERNMENT POLICY

SECURITY THE KEYNOTE

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, September 30.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Lyons) | laid his election cards on the table at Deloraine (Tasmania), his homo town,; on Tuesday night. His policy speech had for its keynote "security at home and abroad." It was devoid of any striking or novel plans for the future. Rather, M>. Lyons relied on his Government's six years' . record as his greatest appeal'to the electors. Constructive points from his speech were that the Government, if returned, would accelerate a defence programme designed to defeat possible invaders before they could reach Australian shores, introduce a comprehensive national insurance scheme, banking revision, and proposals to check the alarming fall i» the birth rate. He explained that the national scheme would provide, for the- great majority of the employed population, guaran-i teed benefits during sickness, pensions for widows and orphans, and superannuation. ; The Government, Mr. Lyons said, would set up a mortgage bank,'as a department of the Commonwealth Bank, for long-term lending for house and rural holdings; would restore pensions, amounting to £220,000 a year, to, the dependants of returned soldiers; and would investigate the practicability of making oans to workers, to be repaid on easy terms. It would attempt to build up population by reducing infant mortality, increasing maternal allowances, and improving national health. It would take up with the British Government the question of assisted passages for nominated British migrants,, and assist schemes of child migration. It would extend the scope of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research to secondary industries, and establish a national bureau of standards; and encourage the production of liquid fuel from coal gas. There was also a promise of an inquiry into the shorter working week (the Labour leader > definitely promised, if returned, to institute a 40-hour week by legislation).

PROSPECTS IN N.S.W.

LABOUR LIKELY TO CAIN

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, September. 30.

The Labour Party is concentrating on New South Wales in the Federal election campaign in the hope of winning there most of the ten seats it needs to obtain power.

New South Wales is the key State for Labour. It was a breakaway faction from that Stye which tumbled the Scullin (Labour) Government out of office at the end. of 1931, resulting in the party going into the political wilderness for six years. The New South Wales party was dominated by Mr. Lang, and as long as Mr. Scullin remained head of the Federal Party, a bitter feud kept the State faction apart from the parent body. When Mr. Curtin succeeded Mr. Scullin as Federal- Leadef, he concentrated on ending the dispute and succeeded in effecting a semblance of unity, which for the election's purposes, gives the Labour Party a solidarity''it' .lacked in this State at the 1931 and 1934 Federal elections.

The effect of this unity will be important Many moderate Labour folk and voters of no particular political allegiance swung their votes to United Australia Party and United Country i Party candidates, either in disgust at or in distrust of the internal Labour jostling for power. The Lang power is still supreme in New South Wales— wits are ■ calling it the shadow behind the Curtin—but for the purposes of the Federal election, it is being subjugated to a "happy family" note. v

The result may be a swing back to Labour of several doubtful seats in New South Wales. The party officials in Sydney are receiving the best reports from the country since Mr. Scullin swqpt into power in 1929. The party expects to capture '.lye seats at present held by United Australia Party men, two in the metropolis and three in the .country, and three held by the United Country Party. If those hopes were fulfilled, the gain would mean that Labour would need to capture only two more seats in the other five States to obtain a majority in the House of Representatives. There is no doubt there is a greater revulsion of feeling 'in New South Wales against the present Lyons-Page Government than in any other State. A recent by-election in a Country Federal electorate and two by-elections in. State electorates' proved the existence of a swing against non-Labour. Governments.

The United Australia . and United Country Parties realise the danger in New South Wales to their prospects. They are neglecting no effort to stave off the Labour onslaught, concentrating particularly on those border-line constituencies whose allegiance changes from one party or another after a term of years. Labour may not win all the eight seats in which it has set its heart, but there seems to be little doubt that it will win some of them, mainly at the expense of the United Australia Party.