The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1930. MR BAVIN AND MR LANG.

Southland Times, Issue 21196, 24 September 1930, Page 4

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1930. MR BAVIN AND MR LANG.

IL” S.ir Otto Niemeyer roqiired some confirmatory evidence for submission to the Australian pubic of the soundness of the advice he has given them, Mr Lang’s speech Vould supply it. Mr Lang is a poliician with a remarkably loud voice 1 and some skill in pleasing audiences,Composed of people who hold poitical views in common with his owi, but when his speeches are eommited to paper and a study of them irj cold, hard print is possible, their fveaknesses become obvious. The Reader of the New South Wales labour Party is a gentleman who tailed noisily but miserably in his efort to remove the Legislative Counil because it obstructed political sipemes of an extremely dangerous character, His attempts to fill the Legtlative Council with party puppets prepared to provide a majority in the Council and thus ensure that it would jornmit suicide, failed in its first venture, and in its second was Tenderer abortive by the Governor’s refill to make more appointments it Mr Lang’s recommendations. Thj Governor’s firm attitude an appeal to the electors, aid the electors rejected Mr Lang, ortunately for New South Walei Mr Bavin, whom Mr Lang descries as “a wily lawyer,” has proved imself not a man of guile, but a man strong enough to take an unpopular ;ourse he deems to be necessary. to the

interests of the-Statc, and so far his efforts to right the balance in New South Wales have been as effective as they could be in the face of tremendous . difficulties. Mr Lang has now seized the opportunity offered by a new contest and is making lavish bids for tlie popular vote. In effect he is pursuing that course which has proved so popular in other countries, among them New Zealand, dangling before the voters the promise of large sums of borrowed money. He is promising a quick cure of all the ills from which New South Wales is suffering. There is some spiee in the fact that while Mr Lang’s programme involves loans totalling something like £200,000, Mr Theodore, when he was Federal Miriister of Finance, announced that large loans could not be obtained. Australia has been suffering from excessive borrowing, from lavish living, and the whole attitude of the Federal Government, despite the attacks on Sir Otto Niemeyer by some prominent members of the party, has been in the direction of stopping imports and drastically curtailing the raising of money abroad. Mr Lang belongs to the same political group, and in his effort to buy the New South Wales election he is compelled to fly directly in the face of the policy laid down by the Labour Federal Government. Much is being said about lowering the standard of living in Australia, and, of course, the Inference to be drawn from this is that men and women will be required to dispense with necessities and go on short commons. The idea that what is really intended is the lowering of a standard of high living is kept carefully in the background, but that actually is the point at which the economic problems of Australia have to be attacked. The old warning that it is not the high cost of living, but the cost of high living, that is the trouble should, be heeded more to-day than it was when it originally appeared. Thm Australians, and they are not alone in this, have been living beyond their means, they have been spending too much on luxuries, and as the income of the country has fallen, the day of reckoning has come. There/are undoubtedly strong people in Australia, who live carefully, who work hard and do not waste. These people will be produced as striking examples of industry and of the unrighteousness of the request that they should lessen their expenditure, but the generality supplies sufficient evidence of the need for such a course. Russia has provided an additional problem for Australia —she is cutting the prices of wheat —and it looks as if Australia may suffer a further diminution to hex - income. How, then, can it be argued that the man who was in the habit of buying a ten guinea suit can continue to do so when he has not the money to purchase anything more expensive than a five guinea one? The advocation of the curtailment of expenditure on luxuries is unpopular, but Mr Bavin has followed that course firmly and with courage. He may go down in the pending election, and if he does and Mr Lang is imposed on New South Wales, it will mean that the State will be pushed a little further into the mud and will have the consolation of knowing it went down wearing the brummagem trinkets provided for by Mr Lang’s borrowed money.