Grey River Argus MONDAY, May 13, 1929. QUEENSLAND LABOUR DEFEAT AT THE POLLS.

Grey River Argus, 13 May 1929, Page 4

Grey River Argus MONDAY, May 13, 1929. QUEENSLAND LABOUR DEFEAT AT THE POLLS.

It might be said that, after their record term in office, the Labour Government might have expected the Queensland political pendulum to swing them back into the place of the Opposition, but it cannot .be denied that their defeat on Saturday is a real surprise. The explanation is undoubtedly that it is due to the split in Labour’s industrial ranks/ which widened with each of the succeeding strikes, when the Communists and their sympathise ers were alienated by the Government’s stand, especially that for an immediate resumption by the railwaymen. During the election campaign, the keenest hecklers of ; Labour candidates .were the Communists. The anti-Labour element were quick to take advantage of the opportunity to exploit this difference, whilst they also set themselves out to persuade the city unemployed that the Government were the sole cause of their idleness. It is the small farmer, no less than the average wage-earner, who is the strongest supporter of Labour in Queensland, for the big squatters

have done their utmost against the Administration which has replaced land monopoly by closer settlement in a degree unexampled elsewhere in Australia. When farmers, especially the soldier settlers, found themselves exploited by jam and fertiliser monopolies, the Labour Government provided the remedy in the shape of State jam and arsenic factories, and the other State enterprises likewise have provoked the hostility of the vested inter ests. The only real failure among those public enterprises have been the state stock farms, owing mainly to the droughts which decimated privately-owned herds and flocks no less than those of the State in recent years- It is true that the Government earned antipathy when at Port Mackay it compelled recipients of the unemployment relief-of £1 weekly to make a choice between accepting jobs provided by the State and the expedient of going fishing with their families, while living on the relief payment. It is also true thfU hostility arose when certain railwaymen were cheeked in a pastime carried on in working hours. Taken by and large, however, the Administration which has just been displaced is undoubtedly the greatest and most far-sighted that ever Queensland has had; one that has made history, not only in its policy of financial self-re-liance, when faced by the united opposition of massed capital in London, but also in developing a semi-tropical State upon lines more enlightened and successful than any other territory! in the same latitude under the British flag, if not any other, for that matter. The record of Labour in Queensland from the day its famous leader, the late T. P. Ryan, guided it into power, „nd his successor. Mr E. G. Theodore, maintained it there, as well as while its present leader, Mr W. McCormack, has been successfully surmounting problems which have baffled anti-Labour Administrations in the other States, is indeed a credit to the Movement. Certainly it leaves Queensland very far advanced from where r it found her. The true worth of its work will only now begin to be realised by contrast with what may be expected from the antijLabour combination once they are in the saddle. Not only will land monopoly begin over again, and the big financiers at home and abroad recover their dominance, to the detriment of the small farmers whom the retiring Government has set up on sugar, cotton, pastoral and other farms in thousands, but it is not unlikely that instead of being the State to which the unemployed have been flocking, it will witness an exodus of workers. With a setback to State enterprise in several directions, Queensland is unlikely long to retain the lowest cost of living figures it now has. nor the largest provision for the unemployed, nor the greatest influx of immigrants of all Australian States. The several new industries which the State has been inaugurating, with judicious aid for private enterprise, are likely to lapse, and it would not be sur-

prising to learn of a plan to restore Kanaka labour, in order to transform me sugar-growing industry from a series of moderate-ly-sized holdings to one of huge holdings again. It might be said that a view of this kind is redolent of the prophet Jeremiah, but it was doubtless with sineeri ty that the retiring Premier told his Brisbane hearers on Saturdav they had in changing their Government entered with eyes open into a. bargain for what they will get later on, and could regard it as deserved- Of course, no Administration can hope to retain power without a break, and seeing that no Administration in New Zealand political annals has

lasted for the fourteen years and more which the Labour Government has done in Queensland, the Party can philosophically regard their position, and rest safely on their laurels.