CONCILIATORY GESTURE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22145, 26 June 1935, Page 10

CONCILIATORY GESTURE

The arrival in Perth of enough Ministers and officials to stage a meeting of the Federal Cabinet, the first to be held in Western Australia, must be construed as a gesture of conciliation. The secession petition sent to Westminster failed in its objective, for it was declared by a joint Parliamentary Committee that it could not properly be received by Parliament. This decision did not soften the attitude of the 'secessionists toward their declared determination to withdraw from the Commonwealth, but it did cast on the Federal authorities, according to the implied admission of Mr. Lyons himself, the responsibility of finding means to placate Western Australia. Nor is this State the only one with grievances. Recently it was announced that a conference representing South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania would me6t in Melbourne in August to discuss their relationship to the Commonwealth. Of the three, Western Australia is the only one, so far, to have made direct and militant movements toward secession, but there are discontents and malcontents in the other two. This has long been recognised. In February last year a conference of the heads of all States and the Commonwealth, held in Melbourne, discussed the whole Federal position at some length. Unanimity could not be obtained on any question of importance, though the discussions did reveal, in an even clearer light than before, the undoubted fact that finance lay at the root of the whole issue. Yet it was not finance only in the sense of pounds, shillings and pence. There was the accompanying feeling that increasing domination by the Commonwealth in the financial field would eventually mean domination in all other fields. If the aim of the gathering was to soften Western Australia's attitude to secession, it failed. The present temporary transfer of the Federal Cabinet to Perth must be taken as a renewed attempt to conciliate the malcontents in this recalcitrant State.