THE H.B. TRIBUNE. MONDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1922. AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL ELECTION.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XII, Issue 303, 11 December 1922, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE. MONDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1922. AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL ELECTION.

While we are waiting for the final verdicts in our own as yet, doubtful electorates, verdicts which will decide whether Mr. Massey will or will not command a majority in the House of Representatives that will enable him to carry on, it may be worth while taking a glance at the conditions that apply in the Australian Federal ejection which is fixed for Saturday next. These conditions are, in their essentials, not, unlike those under which the electors of New Zealand were called upon to exercise a franchise similar to that which obtains'in Australia. There, as here, there are three main .existing parties proposing to lay claim to support. Those are, firstly, the Nationalists who still remain loyal to the Prime Minister, Mr. W. M. Hughes, and are prepared to maintain him and his present Cabinet in office; secondly, the Country Party, which, under Dr. Earle Page, hived off from the Nationalists- itself originally a coalition outcome of war and postwar conditions —some little time ago; and thirdly the Labour Party, of which Mr. W. P. Charlton is for the present the acknowledged leader.

As between the Nationalists and the Country Party there is no very real divergence upon the basic principles of government, that is, neither has any idea of making any fundamental change. Like the Liberals in New Zealand, the Country Party is attacking the Government almost entirely upon points of administration, the chief grievance, as their party label suggests, being that rural interests are being sacrificed in favour of those of the urban communities. In Australia as in New Zealand—whgse Official Labour Party has very largely adopted the Australian code and is led by an Australian, not a Now Zealander—the Labour Party aims at a system of socialisation that must necessarily involve a large, measure of virtual confiscation. if it is to be carried out tvifh the haste which is evidently desired. Beyond these main parties, we have the further complication created by the genesis, since this year’s State election in New South Wales, of a new Federal Labour group under Mr. J. H. Catts which seeks to be known as the Majority Labour Party, a. title whose assumption has. of course, yet to be justified. The present House oi* Representatives consists of seventy-five members, so that, as Mr. Hughes pointed out in one of his recent speeches, “in order to govern the country it is necessary that thirty-

eight members of a party, and no fewer, should be elected to it so that effect may be given to any defined policy.’’ But, as the Country Party is putting forward only some twenty-eight candidates, it is obvious that it, like the Libera! Party in the Dominion, makes no profession of hope to secure the majority which would enable itself to take office. In fact, it is worse placed than our Liberals, inasmuch as it has little chance of attaining even second place in the counting of votes in the House, although this position may, of course, be changed owing to the split in the Labour forces. This, howfiVer, is a development that cannot by any means be reckoned upon, despite the fact that Mr. Catts proclaims loudly the success of his mission.

But, putting this possibility aside, we have it in Australia that the Country Party, like the Liberal Party here, can be effective in influencing matters against the present, Government only by allying itself, either permanently or temporarily, with one or other, or both, of the Labour groups. But, here again, we have conditions almost parallel with our own, for the Australian Country Party like the NewZealand Liberal Party vociferously disclaims any sympathy with the distinctive principles that guide Labour’s movements. In fact, one of the principal charges brought by the Country Party against the Hughes Government is that it has truckled overmuch to the Labour vote in the House. For instance, Dr. Earle Page, in one of his recent addresses, replying to a statement made by Mr. Hughes that “the Country Party consistently and uniformly voted with the Labour Party right I hrough the present Parliament,” said: “The number of times the Labour Party has voted with the Country party is small indeed, compared with the number of times the Labour Party has voted with the Nationalist Party in their unholy alliance to clap the heaviest duties of the whole British Empire on the backs of the producers here.”

From this bare outline of the situation—into which a great deal of dark and light shading requires to be filled in order to give a full conception of all the agencies at work—it will be gathered that Federal politics are just now, as are those of New Zealand, “just anyhow’,” and that it would be a bold prophet, W’ith any kind of reputation to maintain, who would presume to foretell the result of the election . So far as Labour is concerned, very much will, of course, depend upon the effect of the Catts secession. That gentleman’s influence throughout the Commonwealth may easily be over-estimated if we calculate it barely on the fact that he succeeded in his candidature for the New South Wales Parliament in the face of the bitterest opposition from the State Labour caucus. He, on his part, and with all the intimate knowledge which his previous position gave him, has launched against both State and Federal Labour Parties accusations of intrigue and corruption, both Internal and external, of such a character that they would have had no possible chance of acceptance if formulated by an outsider. His chief claim to credibility lies in the fact that his demand for an independent investigation of the operations of the party leaders has been met with refusal. It remains to be seen w'hat, kind of following he will have in his attempt to cleanse what he himself has called Australian Labour’s Augean stable.