IMPORTED GOVERNORS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21646, 17 May 1932, Page 6

IMPORTED GOVERNORS.

There can be no doubt lurking in the minds of people who have acquainted themselves with the recent history of New South Wales that Sir Philip Game acted with perfect constitutional propriety last week in dismissing the Lang Government from office. The action that was taken by him was, however, one for which there was so little precedent—none at all in the experience of Australia—that it can only have been taken after very serious and mature reflection. The Governor did not follow the line of least resistance. The easy thing would have been for him to allow Mr Lang, with that obstinate perversity that seems to be characteristic of him, to enmesh himself more and more in the toils until, from sheer inability to operate the machinery of government, he would be forced to seek a dissolution of Parliament. That is the course which a weak Governor would have pursued, and it is the course which a Governor chosen from the residents of New South Wales, possibly on the nomination of Mr Lang’s own party, might almost have been expected to pursue. The episode of Mr Lang’s dismissal is one that may be said to emphasise strongly the desirability of the appointment to the office of Governor only of a person who is a stranger to the Dominion or State in which he is to serve. No disrespect whatever to the present Governor-General of Australia is implied in the expression of the hope that his appointment, which was made at the instance of a Labour Government, will not be treated as a precedent for

the appointment of another Australian to the position that is occupied by him. The selection of a resident of Australia for the office of GovernorGeneral entailed the disappearance—temporarily only, it is to be trusted—of the valuable link between the Commonwealth and the Mother Country that was supplied in the presence of a British subject from abroad, one known to the Sovereign and possessing his confidence, as the representative, of the Crown in Australia. There is a distinct advantage in the retention of that link, and there is a distinct advantage also in the appointment of a GovernorGeneral, or of a Governor, who has never had affiliations with any political party in the Dominion or State to which he is appointed, has never registered a vote in that country, and is able to consider calmly and dispassionately the issues that demand the exercise of his judgment. A Governor is not a mere figurehead as some people loosely imagine. He may be called upon, rarely though it may be, to make constitutional decisions of vital importance, such as that made by Sir Philip Game last week. It is clearly of supreme value that in such circumstances he should be free from exposure to the imputation of political partisanship that might be levelled against any Governor who was a resident of the country in which the appointment was held. '