The Evening Star TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1926. MR LANG’S VENDETTAS.

Evening Star, Issue 19407, 16 November 1926, Page 6

The Evening Star TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1926. MR LANG’S VENDETTAS.

Politics have been a continual battle for Mr Lang, the Labor Premier of New South Wales, since his Government was returned to office in June of last year. When he has not had to fight to keep his leadership in his own party he has been engaged in two vendettas, closely associated with each other. Admission of failure in the external conflicts would doubtless make new dangers for him in the first, so the vendettas persist with unabated vigor of language, if not of action. Some members of his party did not help him in them at a crucial moment, but the Australian Labor Party Conference, meeting now in Sydney, is enthusiastically at his hack. Mr Lang had not been long in office before he found that some, hut not all, of his policy measures—principally Bills of which the policy had never been submitted to the electors—were being either rejected or amended out of knowledge by the hostile majority in the Legislative Council. The Council had an excuse for that conduct, quite apart from any question of the merits or demerits of the measures themselves, in a pledge which he had given before the elections that no legislation would be attempted by him beyond a definite programme which ho detailed. But its opposition was none the less intolerable to Mr Lang, lie asked the Governor (Sir Dudley De Chair) to appoint twenty-five new Labor Councillors to submerge it, and the Governor, though he thought the number too many, consented. When, almost immediately, it was sought to use these new appointments for the passing of a Bill—making another addition to the election list—to abolish the Upper House, the number proved not enough. First* a delay was caused by the refusal of three Labor Councillors who had paired for the session with absent members of the Opposition to break their pairs at command of the Labor Caucus. When the vital decision was eventually called four of the new appointees preferred to be absent and two other normal supporters of the Government voted with the Opposition. The Bill was defeated by 'six votes. Mr Lang’s wrath was turned then against the’ Governor, who was unwilling to appoint more “lords” to make jbis designs f gaigrt

Upper House effective. The principle was pronounced that a Governor should not use his discretion, but should do what his Ministers advised. Tho conditions of appointment, by which discretion is accorded him. were described as a relic of Crown Colony administration and an outrage upon democratic government. Mr Lang’s Attorney-General, Mr' MTiernan, was sent Home to impress these view's upon the Imperial Government. Protest was made' recently in the New South Wales Parliament against the delay in making public Mr M'Tiernan’s report on his mission. Tho report has now been published, more for tho information, it w'ould appear, of the Labor Conference than of Parliament. Mr M'Tiernan waited upon Mr Amery, who replied to his suggestion for tho curtailment of Vice-Regal powers that that was a large question. More States than New South Wales were concerned in it. The Attorney-General got no satisfaction. But tho Labor Conference is determined not to allow tho matter to rest.

Hostility towards tho Governor has grown into hostility to all State Governors. They, are not needed in Australia. So the Labor Conference has determined. An earlier claim was that Australian Governors ought to bo Australians. When Australia is agreed that that will be an improvement on the present system, tho change undoubtedly will be made. No opposition will bo offered by the Imperial authorities. That is the gist of answers which they have made from time to time to the suggestion, and the answer was repeated only last year when the Premiere of all the States except Victoria addressed a letter to the Secretary for the Dominions, submitting that “on the expiration of the term of office of each of the distinguished gentlemen who now occupy the position of Governor in tho respective Australian States he may be succeeded by an Australian citizen appointed by His Majesty tho King.” “The matter,” Mr Amery wrote, “is one to bo decided by Australian opinion.” But he went on to impress that “if tho Premiers’ proposal is to bo adopted there should b© no doubt that Australian opinion generally is in favor of the change, and so strongly in favor of it that a subsequent demand for its reversal is not likely to arise.” lb was made plain, by resolutions of protest forwarded from Australia against the State Premiers’ suggestion, as well as by the opposition of the Victorian Government, that those conditions do not yet exist. If a Governor is to be anything more than an automaton he will use his powers in moments of emergency most impartially and least offensively when he is a disinterested person—in the Labor Conference’s phrase “ appointed from abroad, who comes here as a stranger, and -remains only a few years,” and not one who has been mixed up with local politics. There would be less respect for Governors if they were locally appointed, and with a subservient Governor, or one deprived of all discretionary powers, or no Governor whatever, which makes the latest proposal, there might soon be no respect for anything in the New South Wales Parliament. Tho Labor Government had a majority of two at the last elections. It is not clear that it had a majority of the votes registered. Under tho system called for there would be no restraint on its actions, since the Upper House would be nominated by itself. The restraint which the present Governor imposes can be only temporary. If tho Government is convinced that it has a majority-of-the" country behind it, it can end tho impasse which has arisen in one act by appealing to the country and securing a plain mandate for its policy. But that is the last course which it will ‘Venture upon.