General Relief. Delight

Northern Advocate, 12 August 1948, Page 5

General Relief. Delight

“A plan, quickly shown to be abhorrent to the vast majority of the people, is now found repugnant to the Constitution,” says the Sydney Morning Herald, commenting on the bank decision.

“That bulwark has once more checked the designs of the Commonwealth Government over-greedy for power and contemptuous of popular will.

“The High Court, of course, has nothing to do with electoral opinion or the politico-economic merits or demits of bank nationalisation.

“Judges are concerned with legal issues alone.

“But never before has a ruling of a court been received with such general relief and delight. “From the first the ordinary citizen had an instinctive realisation that far more was at stake than the fate of the trading banks. “He sensed that his personal liberty was menaced and that the creation of

a Government monopoly in banking would open wide the door to a vast system of bureaucratic socialisation.” This point is also made by the Daily Telegraph, which says:: “If the Commonwealth could establish a banking monopoly it would achieve a dominating power over all industry, finance, and life ip this continent. “The judgment has two important meanings. “It compels the Commonwealth and Labour Party to return to the electors for permission to carry out the programme of socialisation. “Before the Labour Party can advance this line of its policy it must persuade the majority of the voters and the majority of States to amend the Constitution to remove the hindrance of Section 92, which forbids any restraint of trade and commerce between the States. “Secondly, it reaffirms the vital principle that the constitution is merely an instrument of federation and not the overlord of the states.”