Fate of Curtin Government in Balance

Manawatu Times, Volume 69, Issue 303, 22 December 1944, Page 5

Fate of Curtin Government in Balance

“Most Dangerous Fifth Column Activity ”

(By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Special Australian Correspondent.) Received Thursday, 9.30 p.m. SYDNEY, Dec. 21. Australia’s most serious internal crisis of the war has been precipitated by the decision of the central council of the Miners’ Federation to defy the Commonwealth Government by an instruction to its members to take 16 days’ Christmas holidays and to continue protest strikes on the garnishee issue.

Despite the Government's substantial majority in both Houses of Parliament some Federal Ministers are reported to believe that the fate of the Curtin Administration is in the balance.

A special meeting of tne emergency committee of the Australian Council of Trades Unions to-day issued a statement indicating that the miners can expect little support from the other unions in their defiance of the Government. “If the miners want to subscribe to industrial anarchy they will not receive the official support of the A.C.T.U. which has endeavoured all through to bring about an appeasement between the miners and the Government to the advantage of the miners,” said the A.C.T.U. secretary (Mr. A. E. Monk). “If the miners want to burn all their boats behind them they must accept the consequences of their folly.”

The Federal Cabinet will hold a special meeting to consider the coal situation which is generally conceded to be fraught with calamitous possibilities. Despite the statement to-day by the miners’ general secretary (Mr. G. W. S. Grant) that the situation could still be retrieved if the miners and the Federal Government would get together between now and January 2. A general feeling persists that the obstinate attitude of the miners’ governing body must cause a major breakdown in coal supplies. Even if some reconciliation between the miners and the Government is effected during the holiday period it will be almost impossible to get the men back to work at the end of the 10-day holiday on January 2. The bulk of the miners will leave on their vacation to-morrow and many of them have booked at holiday resorts until January 8.

The Government is committed to prosecutions against miners taking more than 10 days’ holiday leave. The resulting fines must end in garnishees —and miners aro showing their determination to fight the garnishees by refusing to work in mines where these are being levied. Six collieries in New South Wales are idle to-day on the garnishee issue for the loss of 6000 tons of coal, swelling the total coal losses over garnishees to 52,000 tons. The Commonwealth will face the year 1945 with less than half the coal stocks with which it began in 1944. The Minister for Transport (Mr. Ward) revealed to-day that the New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia railways systems have little more than a week’s supply of coal. In all quarters there is evidence of hardening opinion against the miners. The Deputy Leader of the Federal Opposition (Mr. Harrison) said to-day that the Government must face up to the problem of disciplining “the most dangerous fifth column activity that has yet come to our democracy.” Public tolerance towards the miners had long since exceeded the limits of endurance and the nation waited with grave concern for the Government’s next move.

“The possibilities of the next few weeks in this country are gravely disturbing,” says the Sydney Daily Mirror in a leading article to-day. “But one thing is clear above all others. Tfie will of the people as expressed through the democratic organisation of government must be obeyed whatever that might involve. In the circumstances only one course is open to the Government. It must exert its authority. It cannot be defied by a small minority of miners playing with insurrection. Else the law in Australia would cease to have any effect and anarchy and chaos would stalk through the land.

“The decision of the miners’ central executive amounts to an open act ol insurrection —an open declaration of war on the trade union movement of Australia, on the Government and on Australia’s status as a nation.”