The Evening Star SATURDAY, MARCH 25, 1922. New South Wales Elections.

Evening Star, Issue 17928, 25 March 1922, Page 4

The Evening Star SATURDAY, MARCH 25, 1922.

New South Wales Elections.

To-day the electors of New South Wales will be busy recording their votes in tho elections for tho Legislative Assembly. As tho system is that of proportional representation, it will probably be some days before the fate of the Dooley Government is known. It may not be an overstatement to say that no political crisis in the history of New South Wales has ever had more attaching to it than the one now confronting the parent State. To ns at this distance there are no subsidiary issues to obscure the main one, which, in our judgment, resolves itself into tins: Are tho affairs of a community of over two million souls to remain in the keeping of a group of politicians who appear to bo heading for the Soviet system of government in a fashion which is a combination of recklessness and determination? Ono would think that sad and painful experience of the series of economic blunders perpetrated by the Labor regime in New South Wales would be certain to cause the people to put a summary end to it. Accelerated by the general trade depression throughout the world, industrial conditions have lately been going from bad to* worse. The trouble, however, appears to bo that people in the mass are hazy in their coupling of cause and effect. Confusion of thought is added to by the political leaders, whose principal asset nowadays appears to bo their ability to side-track those who are of an inquiring turn of mind by attributing to outside sources, such as the much-abused capitalist, the results of their own misguided and mischievous policy. There has been some corrective to this avoidance of placing the blame on tho right shoulders in tho campaign of the Opposition party, but it has to be admitted that the Nationalist Party is not ono greatly calculated to arouse enthusiasm. It is not prolific in promises, even of reform.

On tho other hand, Sir Dooley and his colleagues are scattering baits among the electorates which the unthinking are sure to greedily swallow. There are also threats designed to appeal to class antagonism. Last year the Now South Wales income tax—as distinct from the Federal income tax—was increased by £2,500,000. This year it is to be increased by another £2,000,000. Rapidly as taxation is piled on, it docs not keep pace with the expenditure ; besides which there are repeated proofs, in the shape of announcements'of big industrial! ventures having to close down owing to the high cost of production making them unremuneralive, that the limit has been already passed in the matter of State interference in the industrial and economic world. The position was aptly pictured in a recent Sydney cartoon. A gaunt laborer is anxiously contemplating from his truckle bed an equally gaunt hen {labelled " Capital ”), and is wondering whether it will continue to lay eggs for him now that he has despoiled it of every feather to stuff the mattress he is lying on. As may be imagined, the mattress is not remarkable for the bulginess suggestive of comfort or warmth. And in that connection it is very doubtful if the masses. receive much real amelioration of their lot from the operation of schemes -devised for their benefit, financed by heavy taxation or reckless borrowing. Tho -basic wage is of not much avail when tho opportunity of a job by which to earn it does not offer. Tho grant payable to Australian parents on the occurrence of a birth in tho family does not seem to go far enough in New South Wales, since tho latest proposition is to add there a motherhood endowment scheme estimated to absorb £3,000,000 a year. Why is this necessary in New South Wales, which ought to bo the richest of the States? That there is some dissatisfaction with tho misgovemment which has distinguished the conduct of political affairs for many years is suggested by tho secessionist move in the northern part of tho State, the retort to which is Mr Dooley’s threat to starve it into submission by the non-ex-penditnro of public money. On tho other hand, he is sweetening the other end of the State by promising the Southern Kaverina a perfect network of railways, though he omits to add that this will necessarily give the men of the Eiverina a much closer acquaintance -with the tax gatherer. For on its railway administration alone the Dooley Government stands condemned. Freights and fares have beqn heavily increased, yet a deficit -of over £1,000,000 is expected this year, and extension of mileage constructed looks like merely adding to it, especially since the recent demonstration that practically all railway lines constructed since Labor came into power in New South Wales- have been run at a loss varying in most instances from £3OO to £BOO per mile per annum. Furthermore, the Dooley Government has virtually promised that, if returned to power, it will create a kind of Soviet Government within tho Railway Department by tho abolition of the commissioner system and the substitution of a board on which there will be representatives of the railway servants. This suggests that the railways would be run for the benefit of the railway servants rather than of tho community. ' Job control of shipping is an; undoubted menace, but job control of the railways would bring trouble even closer homo to the iq general,-