VICTORIA.

Otago Witness, Issue 3673, 5 August 1924, Page 31

VICTORIA.

UNDER LABOUR RULE. (From Oub Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, July 24. Tty- extreme result of the anti-Labour split in Victoria in producing a Labour Ministry causes no surprise to those who have been in touch with the negotiations between the Country Party and the Nationalists, who have realised the impossible nature of the term* and attitude of the Country I arty. A majority in ihe composite Ministry and a Country Party Premier were declared to be a basic and unalterable principle of the party’s attitude, and this Sir Alexander Peacock, the Nationalist leader, declined to consider as being utterly inconsistent with the relatively small number of the Country Party in the House. Such a concession would have produced the Gilbertian situation of by far tho smallest party in the House actually governing the country. But while Sir Alexander was not prepared to freely make such an extraordinary concession, he endeavoured in the subsequent proceedings in the mouse to leave the way open for Mr Allan, the leader of the Country Party, to lead the attack on the Ministry, and thus secure a commission for himself to form a Ministry. A Country Party Ministry brought about in this way w'ould have had the sympathetic support, within certain bounds, of the Nationalists, but . this Air Allan apparently lacked the political prescience to do. He is said to have been convinced that whatever happened in the House the Governor would send for him, and thought that he could leave the odium of displacing the anti-Labour Ministry to the Labour Party and then reap the benefit. Following the defeat in the House on a motion by Mr Prendergast, the Labour leader, Mr Allan, was awaiting a call from his Excellency Lord Stradbroke, and he is said to have been much discomfited by tho announcement that hi 3 Excellency had sent for Mr Prendergast as the mover of the successful want-of-confidence motion, and had given him an unconditional commission. The Country Party extremists are jubilant at the advent of a Labour Ministry, preferring this to control by the Nationalists against whom, more from personal than political antagonism they entertain the bitterest feelings. It is believed that if Mr Allan participated in any attack on the new Ministry there would be a split in the Country Party, and the irreconcilables would give their support to Air Pre-dei-gast, for whom they are insisting upon a “fair deal.” It is. however, unlikely that Sir Alexander Peacock, who is expected to be Leader of the Opposition, will take any immediate action against the Labour Ministry, realising, as the most acute oljseivers throughout Australia to-day do, that the only way to end the impossible divisions in the anti-Labour forces through the Nationalists-Countiy Party hostilities, is to submit to a demonstration of its weakness through a period of Labour rule. Oil the eve of the crisis Mr Frendergast indicated in an interview that one of the first acts of a Labour Ministry would be to provide proper hospital accommodation, doubtless an allusion to the fact that the Melbourne Hospital is turning patients away. Other matters that would receive immediate attention, he said, would be the development of country roads; State marketing of produce; unemployment insurance; reduction, by the marketing scheme, of railway freights and fares; the concession at once of the demand of public servants for access to the Arbitration Court; the constitution of Wages Boards where desired. He also declared that the establishment of a Fair Rents' Court was an urgent necessity. Such are the boldest aims of Victoria’s first Labour Ministry, leaving out of account the flash-in-the-pan Elmslie Ministry which held office in amusing circumstances for a few days in 1913. The new Premier, Mr Prendergast, was at one time a newspaper compositor.