FEDERAL POLITICS

Otago Witness, Issue 3103, 3 September 1913, Page 27

FEDERAL POLITICS

“ IN OFFICE BUT NOT IN ROWER."

MELBOURNE, August 28

Mr Cook, addressing an Interstate conference of Liberals, said the Government was in office, but it was not in power. It was impossible for Parliament to be of long duration, but the Government did not intend to allow the Opposition to force it to go to Jhe country before it was prepared to go. Referring to the action of the Labour majority in the Senate in taking the business out of the hands of the Government in connection with the -appointment of a select committee, Mr Cook declared that he did not intend to stand that sort of thing long. SYDNEY, September 1.

In the course of an interview Mr Cook said : “ We shall go to the country when we are ready, and not a moment before. We should like, if possible, to make some changes in the electoral law, and we shall give Mr Fisher an opportunity of turning down these proposals or passing them, as he chooses. Mr Chinn, who was employed by the Fisher Government as an engineer on the transcontinental railway, has been discharged, and his friends in the Senate have rushed to his rescue. They have set the business of the country aside while they appointed a partisan committee of inquiry. The chairman of the committee has already prejudiced the case by declaring before the inquiry opens that no more scandalous piece of persecution had ever taken place. Mr Cook added : “ The present position cannot, in the very nature of things, be a lasting one.’’