SEEKING A LEADER

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 88, 15 April 1939, Page 8

SEEKING A LEADER

Now that respect has been shown on a nation-wide and all-party scale to the late Mr. Lyons, and now that Easter and the great Easter Show are over, Australia will face the remaking of the Government. This task will be grappled with in the coming week, for the Commonwealth Parliament is to meet next Wednesday, April 19, in terms of a statement on April 7 by Sir Earle Page (Country Party Leader) as temporary Prime Minister. On the day before that date (Tuesday) the United Australia Party—the larger of the two parties which comprise the Government's following, the other being the Country Party—will hold a pre-sessional meeting to elect a leader of the United Australia Party in succession to Mr. Lyons. Among suggested candidates are the Federal Treasurer (Mr. Casey), the Minister of External Affairs (the

Rt. Hon. W. M. Hughes), Mr. jS. M.- Bruce, and Mr. Menzies, who recently resigned the AttorneyGeneralship in protest against the | Government's partial jettisoning of the National Insurance Act, a decision reached under Country Party pressure. For that reason, it is believed that Mr. Menzies would not be acceptable to the Country Party, which, | however, is expected to have no objection to one of the others becoming U.A.P. Leader and therefore Prime Minister. There is, of course, no such thing as a temporary Prime Minister, but that Sir Earle Page regards his Prime Ministership as interim seems to be made clear by the following passage from his statement on April 7:

Before the House of Representatives meets on April 19 they [the members of the United Australia Party] will meet in Canberra to elect a leader. In the meantime, as it is necessary that the Government should be carried on, the Governor-General has commissioned me to continue the Administration.

When the new Government is formed the two great problems of security —National Security (defence) and Social Security—will again claim first attention, with the Country Party's attitude to the latter (National Insurance ' Act) strongly defined.