The Daily News TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 1935. ELECTION IN VICTORIA.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 March 1935, Page 6

The Daily News

TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 1935. ELECTION IN VICTORIA.

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The overwhelming defeat of the Labour Party in the State of Victoria, coming so soon after a similar happening at the Federal elections, indicates that Australia is convinced that there is little to be gained by the changes in policy promised by Socialists if they received sufficient support from the electorate. In Victoria the electoral contest was enlivened in its later stages by the intervention of the State civil servants who were considered to be fairly well organised. They asked candidates for a promise to restore the salary cuts inflicted as part of the State’s plans for economic recovery.. This was refused by the Premier, Sir Stanley Argyle, but the pledge was given by several Labour candidates, and civil servants were advised by their leaders to vote against the Ministerial candidates. It was thought this might have a decisive effect in some constituencies, but as Labour won back only one of the 12 seats lost at the previous election, apparently the general public was not in accord with the views of the civil servants’ organisations. Quite probably many members of the service did not approve of the policy suggested. They may have remembered that on two former occasions, the great railway strike of a generation ago and the unrest among the police in more recent years, the community supported constituted authority, and those Who sought to overthrow it were defeated. The results in Australia might well be pondered over by civil servants in New Zealand. Some of their organisations have adopted a militant attitude in regard to the public affairs, and for the lower paid civil servants there is undoubtedly a fair amount of sympathy felt by the public. But if that sympathy leads to a direct challenge of authority, except at the ballot-box, it will soon be lost. Indeed, the spectacle of civil service organisations actively supporting any political party is likely to make the electorate cling to the policies and administration it has already experienced, rather than accept domination of a party that will permit the interference of public servants in party politics, with the almost certain corollary of “spoils to the victors.” Another feature of the election in Victoria is that the support afforded exponents of new currency policies has been very limited. It is true that one candidate for a Melbourne seat polled over 9000 votes. He was still over a thousand votes behind his opponent, however, and this m a constituency .where the appeal for the Douglas Credit system might have been expected to win support. Victoria is a State in which more than half the population resides in or near the metropolitan area of Melbourne. It still suffers to some extent, although not so much as is sometimes claimed, from the lack of closer settlement in the better class rural lands. The State has had abundant rains this summer, too abundant in many regions, but the result has been an increase in dairy output, and a good wheat crop that seems likely to meet a better market than was expected, and which in any case will have its financial returns improved by a Federal grant. Wool prices have fallen, though not to the disastrous figure of a few years ago, but sufficiently low to make it unlikely that the State will be able to balance its accounts for the current financial year. It was the inability to do so that made the Premier decline to pledge himself or the Ministry in regard to the salary cuts of civil servants. When deficits disappeared from the Budget, he stated, the restoration of the cuts might follow, but until the State’s credit was fully resored all portions of the community must accept part of the responsibility for bringing that about. Taxation in Victoria is heavy, and there were few promises in the policy speeches of Ministers to reduce it until a balanced Budget had been reached. That policy has been endorsed by the electorate, in the rural as well as the urban districts, for in the country electorates Labour appears to have made no headway. In many respects the policy of the United Australia and Country parties are identical. In others, notably in regard to the tariff, the Country party stands for the interests of the primary producer, and it is conceivable that upon the policy that will best serve such interests the coalition in Victoria might split. On the other hand neither wing of the coalition could be defeated in Parliament by the other without the aid of Labour, and such aid, except as a means towards a dissolution is not likely to be

offered. Speaking generally the people of Victoria appear to be satisfied with the Coalition Ministry, and the State is likely to be free from political crises during the lifetime of the Parliament first elected.