FEDERAL ELECTION

Southland Times, Issue 21580, 18 December 1931, Page 7

FEDERAL ELECTION

POLLING TO-MORROW

HURRICANE CAMPAIGN CLOSING PAJiTY LEADERS CONFIDENT (United Press Asen.—By Telegraph—Copyright.) (Rec. 12.30 a.m.) Sydney, December 17. The parties and principals in one of the most strenuous election campaigns are counting the hours to polling day on Saturday when voters throughout Australia will take a hand to decide the fate of the Scullin-Theodore Labour Ministry. The Prime Minister, Mr J. H. Scullin, and the Leader of the Oppositon, Mr J. A. Lyons, join issue in stating that Australia is a vast country, and declare that especially is this noticeable during a hurricane campaign when possibly a dozen meetings must be addressed hundreds of miles apart in one day. Mr Lyons has availed himself of aeroplanes, but Mr Scullin prefers trains and motor cars. These leaders of the two great parties found it impossible to visit Western Australia and little is heard in Eastern Australia how the campaign is proceeding there. Actually the storm centre is New South Wales. Mr Lyons says the rest of Australia is looking to New South Wales to repair on Saturday the mistakes of the last political debacle.

Mr E. G. Theodore, the Federal Treasurer, has be.en unable to risk leaving his electorate (Dailey), where political fireworks are nightly drawing big, excited crowds. The only time Mr Theodore gets an uninterrupted hearing is when he is speaking over the air, which is fairly often. The point he is stressing, which is likely to turn the election, is that a central reserve bank as contemplated will release the frozen assets of the community and will mobilize credit for use in business and trade, while a judicious expansion of credit will provide work for the unemployed. He is fighting terrific odds in a hotbed of Lang planners, but he is confident of victory. The leaders of the anti-Labour parties expect a comfortable working majority as the outcome of the polls because they claim there is a grave fear in the public mind in regard to political meddling with banking. There is keen resentment in rural areas over the Government’s high tariff policy and its failure to deal firmly with Communism.

Mr Scullin, on the other hand, says he scents victory, and remarks that his opponents are not so cocksure of victory as they were at the outset. He is relying on the Government’s achievement in placing Australia on the high road to recovery, its tariff policy, which has increased employment, and its banking proposals to win the day on Saturday. Mr Lyons in a final visit to Sydney before the Federal election made a number of speeches and was warmly received.