The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1931 AUSTRALIA’S VOTE.

Southland Times, Issue 21581, 19 December 1931, Page 4

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1931 AUSTRALIA’S VOTE.

Australia has never before experienced an election quite like the one which terminates to-day. In some respects it resembles the battle in the Old Country, in the multiplicity of groups for instance; but the great difference is that the Government, radical in tone, is attacked on both sides by friends who left it, one lot because Mr Scullin and Mr Theodore were too radical, and the other because they were not radical enough. The Langites are not making a serious fight for office. Their purpose is to spoil the Scullin-Theodore control, and to secure, if possible, such a commanding position that they will be able to dominate the Federal Labour Party and compel it to adopt the wild Lang schemes. In this way the Lang faction headed by Mr Beaseley, while splitting votes in New South Wales against the Labour Government, is frightening moderate people over to the Opposition which will not be in any danger of dancing to the Reds’ piping. Mr Scullin is the victim of Mr Theodore’s brilliant fallacies. His record as Prime Minister is that of a weak man swayed by stronger personalities. W T hile he was in London he supported Mr Lyons and Mr Fenton, his senior Ministers, in their fight to keep the Government from, indulging in repudiation and wild inflation; but as soon as he returned he turned away from

Mr Lyons and became once more the minion of Mr Theodore. Mr Lyons left the Ministry when Mr Theodore was re-engaged as Treasurer, but his withdrawal was not due to jealousy. He saw that the return of Mr Theodore meant a new orientation of the Government’s financial policy, involving the acceptance of most of the things Mr Lyons, with Mr Scullin’s endorsement, had contended against while the Prime Minister was in London. The formation of a united Opposition threw Mr Lyons up to the leadership, and this he has kept with Mr Latham, and with the help of Dr. Earle Page of the Country Party. Mr Stanley Bruce is behind Mr Latham, and if he is returned by Flinders, the first problem of the union of political groups will be a sorting out of the group leaders. In one respect the position to-day is very similar to that which obtained late in the war when Mr Hughes and Sir George Pearce, repudiated by the Labour Party, were driven to throw in their lot with the Nationalists. Mr Lyons is in that position to-day. The principal issue in the elections is centred on finance. Mr Theodore is eager to assert the Government’s control of banking, and to press on with inflation. His purpose is disclosed in his plan to establish a central reserve bank under Government control. This adaptation of -Sir Otto Niemeyer’s counsel provides Mr Theodore with excellent political talk, especially when the public is liable to forget that the Commonwealth Bank would be made into a central reserve bank without much difficulty, and that the essence of a sound central reserve bank is that it shall be free of political interference and of the fear of interference. There is a popular idea that men who have had no practical experience of banking, who are only slightly acquainted with the intricacies of finance, become endowed with all the skill of a Rothschild or a Warburg as soon as they can win the votes of the crowd which knows even less about the management of money. Mr Theodore and Mr Lang are quite prepared to plunge the country into financial experiments, and many people hail them as saviours because they shout pleasant platitudes long since discredited. With the banks presented as the villains of the piece, Mr Theodore would give the control of finance into the hands of politicians absolutely unequipped for the work, and subservient always to what they believe to be popular demand. That popular demand will always be for the easy path, for the extravagant method, hence the danger of trusting finance to the politicians. The Opposition led by Mr Lyons and Mr Latham is urging Australia to eschew political meddling with banking and it is relying largely on the fact that Australia has had a good taste of what the Theodore-Scullin combination means. Both sides speak confidently of the outcome, but the elections in Britain and bi New Zealand suggest that the majority of the people are skeptical of the high-sounding phrases of the Labour Party’s propaganda, and see that the Commonwealth must be rescued from the Communists who have been interfering too long in Australian politics, and from the party which has a record of muddling, brightened only by the effort of the Copland Plan which was adopted in spite of the Scullin-Theodore Government. Australia to-day will have to say whether it wishes to go on meddling with finance or whether it desires to continue the process of recovery started by the Copland Committee in economy and non-inter-ference in banking.