COURT DECLARES FEDERAL BANKING PLAN INVALID

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 August 1947, Page 7

COURT DECLARES FEDERAL BANKING PLAN INVALID

(Rec. 11.25 a.m.) SYDNEY, This Day.

Copies of the High Court judgment declaring invalid section 48 of the Federal Banking Act have been flown to Canberra and will be examined by Mr Chifley, Dr Evatt and Senator McKenna, wno acted as AttorneyGeneral during Dr Evatt’s absence. The Cabinet is expected to consider the decision tomorrow. Before the court had given its decision the Commonwealth issued a list of 126 local bodies, .of which 22 were in Victoria and the rest in New South Wales, whose business trading bank's were forbidden to accept from August 1. It was considered certain that similar bodies in other Stales would come under the ban as soon as arrangements could be made by the Commonwealth Bank. The press this morning is jubilant over the rebuff to the Government measure, which the Daily Telegraph describes as a move towards totalitarianism. “This paper has consistently supported the Commonwealth’s agitation for increased powers.” says the Telegraph, “but we have, rarely been able to endorse the way in which the Government has used its greater powers when it has achieved or grabbed them, because its approach to the problems of administration is totalitarian.” “So naked was the manoeuvre that the validity of the clause has been widely questioned, ever since Mr Chifley introduced it,” says the Sydney Morning Herald, “and his lack of compunction in overriding the rights of others was demonstrated during the hearing of the case.”