THE AUSTRALIAN ELECTIONS

Evening Star, Issue 20316, 26 October 1929, Page 4

THE AUSTRALIAN ELECTIONS

SOME IMPRESSIONS By Lloyd Rosa, M.A., LL.B. Australia has hardly recovered its breath lost'by the results of Saturday’s elections. The Labour Party is busy picking the probable Cabinet, but even its members can hardly believe that the tide has turned so suddenly and so decisively in its favour. The Nationalist and Country Parties lie on the ground stunned. A few ejaculations have come from their leaders, but the disaster has overwhelmed them. The Coalition Government had continuously, controlled the Commonwealth since the Labour .Party split in the conscription crisis of 1916. A year ago the Bruce Government had a majority over the Labour Party of 29 in a House of 75. In the nextvParliament Labour will have at least fortyfive seats, the Country Party may muster eleven, the Nationalists perhaps a dozen. Mr Bruce has lost his seat in a constituency that had never hitherto had a Labour member. To understand the reasons for the sensational overthrow of the Brucs-Page Government it will be necessary to mention the causes that led to an election less than a year after the ordinary General Election. TRACING CAUSES. The Bruce Government, finding that the trade unionists, linked with the federal Arbitration Court, were willing to go out on strike as often as an award unaermined their most precious pnn ciples, and that the strikers were supported by the great majority of the remaining trade unionists, decided to abolish the Federal Arbitration' Court except for shipping disputes. So strong is the solidarity of trade unionism in Australia that the Government found that it was powerless to enforce .awards that the unions objected to, and only after many months of wasteful warfare were the timber workers beaten. Because of the Australian Constitution, the Bruce Government was successful in coercing only the waterside unions and shipping unions. Last year the waterside workers went on strike against an arbitration award, and were crushed by the Government, which refused to permit anyone to work on the wharves without a license issued by the Government and liable to be withdrawn in the event of misbehaviour. To-day the watersiders’ union is broken, and the Bruce Government argued that, since it could not carry out a similar procedure to enforce the awards in the non-maritime unions, it would be better to abolish the Federal Court and leave the States the sole power oi setting up wage fixation machinery. Since they fiatl that power the States would have the same power of enforcement lor Stat. awards that the Federal Parliament had for maritime awards. When the Bill abolishing the federal Court was before Parliament an amendment, moved by Mr Hughes—that no thing should be done until the people were consulted—was supported by a number of Nationalists, and carried by one vote. The Government went to the country, and the greatest political debacle in the Commonwealth history resulted. OLD BANNERS—NEW PERSONALITIES. To come into contact with Australian politics aiter an absence oi four years is to find the old banners of Labour and Nationalist disguising quite different personalities. Mr Hughes has be-, come more bitterly hated by his former Nationalist colleagues than he ever was ha.ed by his former Labour friends. It was he that defeated the Government, and so the groat mass of Nationalist propaganda has been levelled at him. A Nationalist poster represents him as a grand opera conspirator wiping his bloodstained knile, with the text: “It came off—but what next?’’ Only a year ago tho “ Labour Daily ’ said of him that he was the greatest enemy' of the Labour movement. In the elections just passing he was not opp .sed by an official Labour candidate, and the ‘ Labour Daily ’ advised its followers to vote for him! Hughes will survive everything. Already he has been secretary of the Watersiders Union, Labour Prime Minister, Nationalist Prime Minister, Nationalist member in disgrace, and now he calls himself Free Nationalist. Already he has. according to his political opinions for the moment, represented West Sydney,, Bendigo, and North Sydney. He thiknv the bombs that destroyed tho_ Labour and tho Nationalist parties in their turn. To-day he pretends to be satis lied, but the general impression is that the victory for Labour was too great, and that he had hoped to get back into power by holding the balance between the Nationalists and Lobaur. _ Hughes has been discard'd by the Nationalists, and the Adda Pankhursl-Tom Walsh fa aily h: s hfrn welcomed. Four years ago Australia rocked with a law case in which the Prime Minister (Bruce) tried to deport the Seamen’s Union leaders." Walsh and Johnston, for the part they had played in the British seamen’s strike in Australian poits. To-day Walsh speaks before _ the Con stitutional Club, and his wife, Adelti Pankhurst-Walsh. tells the Rotary Club that some of the wisest words she hud ever''heard had come from Mr Bruce. Piquantly enough, a week_ before, Mr Bruce, in reply to an interjection as to why he did not get rid of the agitators that were causing the strikes, said that he had tried to deport two strike leaders. Tho High Court would not let him. but, given the power, he would still do so! WHIRLWIND CAMPAIGN. The week before the poll Sydney was flooded with circulars. Ten thousand copies of the Nationalist paper, ‘ Victory,’ were rushed every morning to the key electorates; Hughes and Nott, his officially endorsed Nationalist opponent, carry on a child’s game of pasting over one another’s posters; balloons support in the at gigantic signs urging public servants to vote against Bruce and for Federal arbitration; the air liner Canberra is employed by tho public servants to carry their loaders throughout New South Wales and Queensland. Mr Marks went from point to point in a motor lorry carrying an illuminated tent emblazoned with electric slogans urging - the electors to vote for him. A Labour member headed a pipe band. In Sydney alone 200 meetings were held nightly. The tactics have been dirty, particularly from the Nationalist side, against those Nationalists who voted against the Arbitrat'd! Court Abolition Bill. They scattered broadcast_ a leaflet showing Independent Nationalist Marks standing side by side with Mary Picbford. and alleging that he was a tool of the A merman moving picture interests Marks published what he claimed was the original photograph, showing a group, mcluding his daughter a"d Hs wife His w fe’s arm, wh’di was interlocked with his own in the original, was era ed from the Nationalist lea f 'et.

Mr Hu "lies attacked a National st painplilet which .suggested that he was the selected Labour candidate. Throughout the country moving picture theatres displayed signs, showed slides,

and even cave speeches on the talkies, attacking the Government for its proposed tax on picture profits. Ths demonstration of the power of American money to interfere in Australian politics purelv for its own selfish vested interests was perhaps the most simster aspect of the elections. , Many rumours in both Sydney and Melbourne linked much of the anti-Bruce propaganda with the movie interests, and a number of libel cases have still to be fought on the question. So Australian democracy decided its Government. ARBITRATION COURT FACTOR. Mr Bruce alleged that many awards had been broken, and that even when the unions did not themselves disobey the awards they supported financially those who were out on strike against the awards. He argued that since the Federal Government had been refused the power to control the whole of Australia’s industrial development, it would be better that the States should take control, and so prevent the wasteful and annoying system _ of overlapping awards, ft was notorious that unions were able to go from one '"court to another just as it suited their interests, ahd that industrial development was being hindered by the complicated system that had grown up, where both Commonwealth and States granted conflicting awards. A chocolate manufacturer in Melbourne had to obey about thirty-eight . different- awards. The picture tax was necessary as the fairest method of meeting the deficit in the Commonwealth Treasury, Bruce argued. Labour declared that the Arbitration Court system was working well, and that it was foolish to abolish a law merely because it was being broken by a few. The electorate has certainly thought so, and Mr Bruce has realised too late how firmly attached to the Arbitration Court system of the Commonwealth the majority of people are. Trade unionist secretaries have told me that, not since the pre-war days of the Labour successes under Fisher; has there been so much enthusiasm. ' Public servants, who previously have been sympathetic to Nationalism, have thrown their money and influence on the side of Labour. The ni’ddl" classes, however, much as they object to strikes, have been convinced that the anarchy that would follow the abolition of the court would bo far more disastrous. Mr Bruce’s electorate includes some of the wealthiest suburbs in Melbourne; successful business men, clerks, solicitors, public servants with moderate incomes predominate. and they have thrown their vote to Labour. Undoubtedly the fear of a reduction of wages all round was the decisive factor in the elections, just as the threat that the amusements would bo attacked was also of great Imnortnuce. It was amusing to hear Mr Jock Garden, who is regarded as Australia’s greatest, extremist, deelar- : ng in Sydney’s domain that with the aid' of the great middle class Labour would be victorious. MR THEODORE. Mr Seullin will be Prime Minister and Mr Theodore bis Treasurer, but Queensland Labour is wondering how long it. will be before Mr Theodore is Prime Minister. No man is more bated and more admired in Australian than Mr Theodore. He left Queensland just before the State Labour rout He led the attack against the extremists in his own party. He has buih up a large fortune He is recognised bv friend and foe alike as a brilliant organism l and overwhelmingly amb ; tinns. A leading accountant to-day sa ' 1 to mo; “Heaven help Australia i' Theodore becomes Treasurer!’’ _ As renresentative of a New South Wales industrial electorate, be .runs with _ the Sydney extremists, but a prevailing Brisbane ophiion is that he will _ throw them -overboard whenever it suits his ambitions. His presence is felt everywhere. He is still young. He is the enigma of Australian politics. Sormhavo whispered that he was the driving Force in the Nationalist breakaway. He certainly was the main personal factor in the Labour victorias in New South Wales, and already tlmre is a movement' to make him Prime Minister Meanwhile the Second Chamber. tV Senate, is Nationalist. Labour legislation can be held up._ A double desolation may follow within the year, and polities is likely to displace erioke' for a while ns the main Australian sport. FACED WITH DEFICIT.

Labour is faced with a deficit of five million pounds, a moderate season, falling prices for wool, promises not to tax beer or amusements, promises to solve unemployment, and clamours by its own followers for reduced hours. In New South Wales and Victoria the demands among its own followers for better conditions are greater than in Queensland, where the workers have learnt by experience the limits of login iative action, even under Laboui Labour in Queensland had to reduci wages and break strikes. It was amusing to see the Nationalists declaring that they supported h gher wages, am that the only Premiers who had reducee wages were Labour Premiers' It was badly defeated at the last elections, largely because its own supporters wer; growing apathetic, and even antagonistic Hardly a trade union secretary has hud a good word to say for the Labour Premier, M'Cormack. Yet after six months of anti-Labour rule I am informed by many that even those who attacked the Labour Government realise their mistake, and that they demanded too much. Whence will come the money for the humanitarian legislation that Labour has promised? What will be the economic results of a forty-foiir-honr week if tho industrialists of New South Wales can force it on the Labour Government? What will bo the new taxes? Will an internal feud split the Federal Party as it split the Lang Government? What if the Federal Arbitration Court finds it impossible tn grant improved conditions, and the unions go on strike? Will a Laboir Government find itself compelled to er force the award against its own fo lowers? These and other qusstio' make the Australian situation mos hiteresting.