WAR CABINET

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 26, 30 July 1940, Page 8

WAR CABINET

MOVE IN AUSTRALIA

NEW ZEALAND'S EXAMPLE

(By Trans-Tasman Air Mail, from "The Post's" Representative.)

SYDNEY, July 24,

New Zealand's decision to form a National War Cabinet is likely to lead to negotiations between the Government and the Labour Party for the formation of a similar body in Australia. Labour opinion is that the negotiations are almost certain to succeed.

Such an Australian Cabinet would be a compromise between a completely National Government, composed of the U.A.P. and Labour and Country Parties, and the War Council, proposed recently by the Commonwealth Labour Conference. Commenting on the announcement of the New Zealand War Cabinet, the Labour Party leader, Mr. Curtin, said that the Commonwealth Labour Conference made an offer to the Commonwealth Government for the same kind of arrangement. In reply to this, Mr. Menzies offered to -give the Opposition five or even six seats in the full Cabinet and to stand down himself if leadership was an issue. But Mr. Curtin said that such a Cabinet, with Labour in a minority, would be a "miniature Parliament in which debate would be continuous, with consequential dissatisfaction, factionism, and political chaos, leading-to more and more coercion by Governments over the rights of civil order." "I am willing to do all I possibly can for Australia and for the men and women who live here, and also for the unborn children, who, in years to come, will live here," said Mr. Curtin, "but I refuse to desert the great body of Labour to prop up political parties of reaction and capitalism. To prosecute the war completely, whatever the war may bring, Labour will give its maximum co-operation. That is unconditioned by portfolios or other enticements." ,„,. ~ , It is this attitude to a full National Cabinet that founds the belief that a War Cabinet on the New Zealand pattern, including two or three Labour Ministers without portfolios, may result The New Zealand plan seems more logical than a National Government, as it would come close to Labour's own scheme of a National War Council, the difference being that the New Zealand War Cabinet accepts some responsibility, whereas Australian Labour suggests a War Council as an advisory body. Mr. Menzies emphasised this "fundamental" difference when rebutting Mr. Curtin's claim of making a similar suggestion weeks ago. I The New Zealand principle of OpI position members of a War Cabinet acceding responsibility for War Cabinet decisions but not for decisions of the Government as a whole has certainly given a lead to 'Australian nolitical parties. The Federal Labour Party will discuss it at a conference in Canberra early next month.