QUEENSLAND ELECTIONS

Otago Witness, Issue 3610, 22 May 1923, Page 22

QUEENSLAND ELECTIONS

ALL MINISTERS RETURNED. BRISBANE, May 14. All the Ministers were returned with good majorities. Mr W. 11. Green, Deputy Leader of the l nited Party, was defeated at Townsville. Labour captured both the newlycreated seats in the metropolitan area. BRITISH NITW SP A PER ’ S COMME NT. LONDON, -May 14. The Financial News, in an editorial entitled “ Pastoral Leases in Queensland, ' says : “ It not often happens that a general election outside England has such a direct interest for British investors as that in Queensland. The composition ot the new Ministry will afleet not merely the holders of loans, but shareholders in land and pastoral mortgage undertakings, j The Liberal Party pledged itself, if returned, to repeal the Labour Government’s Repudiation Act-, which resulted in Queensland failing to raise a loan m the London market and being forced to go to tlie United States. Presumably the repeal of the measure would involve some form of compensation.” PRESS COMMENT IN SYDNEY. SYDNEY 7 , May 14. The Sydney Morning Herald, in commenting on the Queensland elections, says: “It will be interesting to see how Labour interprets the verdict. If its victory is construed into a mandate to go completely Red, to socialise everything, to abolish the Governor and the Legislative Assembly, and to set up an industrial Soviet, Queensland may yet have done a signal service to Australia. We want to see how the extremists w r ill carry out their revolution. They have blustered and threatened long enough. No check or scruple now restrains them in Brisbane. Now for the millennium.” The Herald adds: “The evil wrought is not by the Labour majority in the electorates, but bv the wastage of the. .Nationalist and Country Party strengths against each other. The same fate awaits all tlie Australian Parliaments unless they take a lesson from Queensland. The Daily Telegraph states: ‘‘The victory lay in the fact that the Labour Party was united, while anti-Labour was disunited. If Mr Theodore’s prediction of a wave of Labour victories in Australia is not to come true the ranks of the anti-Socialists must be tightly closed up in future.” SYDNEY, May 15. The Daily Telegraph says: “The Queensland Labour victory seems to have been very much in the nature of a personal victory for Mr Theodore. There is reason to believe that there is not much of the tiger about him, but that, like some other Labour politicians, lie would be willing to use the extremists. If he swims too far with the tide he may not be able to swim against it when he wishes to turn back. We do not believe that Mr Theodore will try to make Queensland a Communistic State.” BRISBANE May 18. A progress analysis of the voting shows that the aggregate votes cast in the Sta*e election were: —labour, 164,364; antiLabour, 160,948. With a possible alteration in the case of a couple of seats, the progress returns show the present state of parties to be as follows,;—Labour, 44; United Party, 16; Country Party, 12.