The Evening Star MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1931. AUSTRALIAN ELECTIONS.

Evening Star, Issue 20981, 21 December 1931, Page 8

The Evening Star MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1931. AUSTRALIAN ELECTIONS.

The primary reason for the heavy defeat of Labour in the Federal elections is that the party itself is badly split. Labour’s discipline is unquestionably more severe and rigid than that of any other party, but when discipline is administered by those who seek to govern others before learning to govern themselves difficulties are bound to arise. There is the resentment of that section of the rank and file who get tired of always playing the part of dumb dogs. And there is friction between those who have risen to the top and find they can only stay there by using the methods of the dictator. But when more than one, man aspires to the dictatorship trouble is inevitable. In the present case the rival sections of Labour were ranged behind leaders who represented two schools of finance, both bad. There were the Scullin-Theo-dore inflationists and the Lang-Beasley repudiationists. The fact that both were quack nostrums drove altogether out of the Labour camp such men as Mr Lyons, whoso personality led him to supersede speedily Mr Latham as leader of the sound finance party. It is not certain that Mr Lyons will bo bead..,of the next Administration. Mr Stanley Bruce has been re-elected, and in virtue of his past record the Prime Ministership should be his. But the man on the spot has a considerable advantage, and Mr Lyons has in the Chamber at Canberra and in the campaign just ended proved himself so valuable a reinforcement to the National cause that his claims will be hard to combat if he cafes to push them resolutely. However, the crisis in Australian national finances is so great that one can surely rely on personal ambitions being subordinated for the common good. Whether a period in opposition will tend to weld the split in' the Labour ranks is problematical. Mr Scullin professes to believe that Labour’s differences are only temporary. He admits a staggering blow to Labour in the results of the voting, but looks for a strong reaction before many months. As Mr Scullin’s pre-election victory forecast indicated also, optimism must have chief place in a party leader’s window-dressing. It is admitted that in New South Wales the fiercest fights were those between representatives of the two Labour factions. These leave more than transitory scars.

The preferences of the six States provide food for thought. Ten “ Langplanners ” have been returned to tho Federal House, and they all represent New South Wales electorates. No other State would have one. It is just possible that among the new Sydney representatives will be Mr “Jock” Garden, who in this contest figured as Mr Lang’s chief lieutenant. Private advices from Australia indicate that there is a belief among many people not associated with the Labour movement that Mr Lang, despite his maladministration—or perhaps because of it—has averted a revolution in Now South Wales. Certain it is that he lias enlisted one of tho most prominent revolutionaries in Sydney for his anticapitalist campaign. Air Garden has been denounced by Labour leaders as 4 ono of the wreckers of the Labour

movement in Australia. We confess that we should not like to see him in the Federal Parliament, believing that Australians should be represented there by men of local birth and bringing up who want to build up their country, rather than by imported agitators whose perhaps unfortunate experience in their country of origin has developed in them an ineradicable grouch against society and a life habit of wrecking what others have built up. Tho ten New South Wales “ Lang-planners ” at Canberra will have the representatives of the rest of the Australian States inexorably against them, besides a majority of their own colleagues. Tho next most influential State to New South Wales in point of numerical representation is Victoria, which usually provides more than its quota of Ministers in any Cabinet. Its revulsion against Labour in any guise is very significant, (It may be mentioned that Victoria’s efforts to rehabilitate her State finances have been strikingly more successful than New South Wales’s.) The Western Australian returns are necessarily incomplete, hut so far as they go they seem to indicate a distrust of any of the recognised parties except the Country Party. This perhaps is only in keeping with the position of Western Australia as leader of the three secessionist States (South Australia and Tasmania being the other two) who desire to undo the Federation of Australia. Queensland, on tho other hand, has clung more to the orthodox Labour movement than any other State. Possibly this is because tlie virtual backbone of that party in Parliament was one of its own political products. But Mr Theodore has suffered a crushing personal as well as party defeat, and has announced his intention of abandoning politics altogether. Many a more thin-skinned man would have done this some months ago after the business of the Mungana leases came into prominence. Queensland as a State is undergoing the economies of an anti-Labour Government, clearing up the legacy left by the Labour Governments led by Messrs Ryan, Theodore, and M'Cormack. Then again there is‘ the question of the sugar industry. Here Queensland has a monopoly, subsidised by the Federal Government out of the pockets of the taxpayers of all Australia. The sugar industry has recently been reported on by a Committee of Inquiiy, for it is more than suspected that tho present scheme imposes a severe strain on all other export industry, a strain sometimes too great to be borne. Tho Scullin Government decided to renew the sugar embargo for five years as from September 1, 1931, thus perpetuating Queensland’s exploiting of the consumers in all the States, and Queensland’s voting on Saturday may bo regarded as a recognition of services rendered. Tasmania, whoso productive industries have suffered cruelly under tho isolation enforced by the Navigation Act dictated by tho trades halls of the mainland, is pinning her faith entirely to tho anti-Labour party.