AUSTRALIAN TOPICS

Evening Star, Issue 21012, 28 January 1932, Page 13

AUSTRALIAN TOPICS

MUSCOVITE MEASURES [From ' Ou» Correspondent.] SYDNEY, January 19. Mr Lang, Premier of New South Wales, may seem a romantic figure—from a distance. But when Australians from beyond Ids own State suddenly come within the Sovietising sway of his “ Lang Plan,” they find him more irritating than romantic. This revelation has just been given to quite a number of holidaying motorists from Queensland and Victoria who planned a jaunt in their cars around the surf beaches and other scenic glories of New South Wales. But when they reached the border of that mother State, they got a dose of Langism that left them staggered. One of Mr Lang’s Muscovite masterpieces is the Transport Act that summarily drove private motor buses out of Sydney. It also makes it illegal for any private motor car to carry a passenger for payment. If a motoring friend gives a neighbour a lift into the city, and the neighbour so obliged pays threepence as his share of the petrol, the motor owner is a malefactor in the eyes of the Lang law. And if a commercial traveller’s motor carries samples for sale, it also is offending. So when the fleets of touring motorists from other States reached New South Wales borders, they had to submit to an officious search of their luggage, lest any trade goods be secreted there. Not only is_ this a flagrant denial of the Federation hat that complete freetrade shall operate between Australian States, but the Lang law actually empowers railway and tram porters to act as the officious inspectors of tho tourists’ luggage. These “commissars ” did their job so boorishly that many of the motoring visitors to New South Wales turned back home in disgust without proceeding to spend their holiday money at any of that blighted State’s beautiful resorts. Of course, this precious Transport Act is only part of the grand Sovietising scheme being matured by Mr Lang’s Trades Hall bosses. It only the tipper State House will allow him, Mr Lang will oblige his radical pals by passing a so-called Arbitration Bill handing over business management virtually to trade union secretaries, organisers, and their paid agents. Under this measure, already forced through the Lower House, no employer Would be able to engage or dismiss hands without trade union permission. .And if any business house did protest against a union’s edict in such matters, that house could be summarily shut up by the despotic union bosses. What scope for bribery and corruption such a “ plan ” provides is easily realised. Employers would inevitably have to pay “ baksheesh ” to the hordes of “ inspectors ” and other hangers-on of the Soviet system. Australia has long known, in a vague way, what Mr Lang is up to. It has been entertained rather than shocked by that Premier’s Muscovite antics. But now Australia is “ laughing on the other side of its face.” A considerable portion of it has just had a personal taste of Langism—and wants to spit the nasty nostrum right out of its mouth. It may soon bo able to do that, for signs are not wanting that the Lang regime has about reached the end of its tether. Already anti-Lang forces are mustering and drilling for an early State election tussle, and Australia will sigh with relief if such an appeal at tho New South Wales polls puts another Government on to the Treasury Benches. Mr Lang will be missed as a Ministerial buffoon, but the public will forego such entertainment without much regret, for_ they now know that the Lang clowning is both mischievous and vicious. A JUDGE’S PAST. Though it takes a democracy to love a lord, a democracy can also appreciate the man who struggles from lowly toil to distinguished heights. So Australia has a merited pat on the back forjudge Perdriau, who now acts as the Workers’ Compensation Commission in New South Wales. This legal light has just confessed that in his younger days bo had a job of loading lorries. Out in black soil plains, where the 'sheep graze, he also helped many a time to shoulder a wool-loaded vehicle out of axle-bogging ruts. It was after he had served such a strenuous apprenticeship of droving, dipping sheep, branding beasts and general jackerooing that he turned his mind seriously for the first time to a legal training. It is good in these days to find a high-placed man plainly proud of his modest beginnings. But, like the Commonwealth GovernorGeneral, Sir Isaac Isaacs, who had an oven humbler start in life, Judge Perdriau has nothing of the smug smiles-self-help unction about him. “SOME” GIRL. Australia is chuckling over the outcome of a fervid little argument in its literary midst. One highbrow struck an attitude, and deplored how the modern novelists and scenario _ writers exaggerate the charms of their heroines. His remedy was to go hack to tho British classic writers for a really sober picturing of female beauty. Into the controversy was poured tins little quotation: “ She is the type of female loveliness young, handsome, gay, witty, and good; soft as a rose, sweet as a violet, chaste as a lily, gentle as a dove, loving everybody, by all beloved.” No, it is not a purple patch from a filmed hit of Hull or Dell ecstacies. It is merely a prose passage from Faerie Queen,’ Tvritten quite a long time ago by some old chap called Spenser! NEW WILLIAM TELL.

Both Melbourne and Sydney have lately been disturbed by the barking of gangsters’ guns, though in these underworld vendettas it is mostly the gangsters themselves who get shot. .Nor is all gun skill displayed only for harmful purposes. Sydney now boasts a perfectly good citizen who is also a traveller for a small arms linn. And when it comes to “ toting a gun and being quick on the draw,” he outHarts the screen’s Bill Hart. What if the pundits can prove that the original William Tell never shot an apple off his son’s head, when this modern Tell can shatter tiny glass balls held between tbo fingers and thumb of any obliging person. His greatest feat is to fire with a revolver and a rifle at two targets at the same time—and hit both._ Such things may look easy in the movies, but then so does the dodge of lighting a fire by rubbing two sticks. In real life, it takes some doing; hence the popular applause for this peaceful Australian gunman. Yes, quite peaceful. Not a single thug has so far fallen to his gun. His only “ casualty ” occurred recently in a newspaper account of one of his demonstrations: “ A shot rang out and then silence fell.’'