ELECTION IN QUEENSLAND

Taranaki Daily News, 9 June 1932, Page 5

ELECTION IN QUEENSLAND

PROMISES BY THE LABOUR PARTY.

PREMIERS’ PLAN ATTACKED.

Sydney, June 2. Tho holding of simultaneous elections in two States is an event without precedent in Australia. If , New South Wales could have gone to tho country first, what is generally regarded as the inevitable result there might have had | a powerful effect in Queensland in fat - ; our of the retention of the-anti-extrem-I ist Moore Government. I In Queensland, as in New South Wales, the broad issue before the people is whether thf» rehabilitation scheme under the Premiers’ plan shall be consummated by the Commonwealth and the whole of the States, working in harmony, or whether the people, by a majority choice, are prepared to swallow the “quack remedies” of tho new Labour Party and to accept the consequences of their act. In Queensland, Labour has branded as “tame economists” the authors of the Premiers’ plan, or what is better known in that State as the People’s plan. In its attacks on that plan Labour ranges itself not only against the financial and economic authorities of Australia, but also against such Labour men as Mr. Hogan, ex-Prcmier of Victoria, who was returned unopposed for his electorate on this issue at the recent election in that States Mr. Hill, Premier of South Australia, and othei Labour leaders who are satisfied that the plan provides the only safe road to national recovery. The people of both States can accept, either that, or, on the other hand, the idea of a mythical loan in Queensland, and the amazing and impossible debenture scheme in New South Wales. These, stripped of all emotion and bias, are the plain issues before the people of two of the richest States of the Commonwealth. Whether the electors think the Moore Government in Queensland is pursuing the only safe course for that State and for Australia; whether, to quote his party’s catchcry, “Lan<r is right” and the rest of Australia Is wrong, is the issue in the two States on Saturday. Throughout his campaign m Quc?~?.land, the Premier, Mr. Moore, in common with Mr. Stevens in New South Wales, has insisted that the greatest issue is the question of adherence to the Premiers* Plan. It is to the, credit of the Moore Government that it was the first to put the plan into operation. Labour in Queensland in the present campaign speaks of a “modification ’ of the plan. It suggests that the same end can bo reached by some other course, but it does not produce any figures to show that any modified plan will meet the situation. Nor has anyone else in Australia advanced any i practicable alternative to the plan. I Every move which has been made by i Mr. Moore and the other. Premiers beyond New South Wales, in compliance with the plan, has been based on plain figures. The people know as a result what the country owes; what it must pay out in governmental expenditure, and how much it is likely to receive. Labour asks Queensland to contrast with that scheme a fancy and impossible loan scheme and a modified, reconstruction plan without any basis of fact or figures. Queensland, in short, which has had some experience of the financial frensy of past Labour Govern-, men Is, is asked to sign a blank cheque.