REFERENDA DEFEAT.

Timaru Herald, Volume XCIV, Issue 14453, 27 May 1911, Page 1 (Supplement)

REFERENDA DEFEAT.

LABOUR PARTY LOST

Mr F. M. B. Fisher, M.P., returned from ,i visit to Australia last weak. Asked what he thunght was the cans'of the defeat of the Referenda prol I'tisate, Mr Fisher said that in his opinion it was attributable to two or three very important reasons. One was that, the Referenda, were regarded by the commercial community as being an attack upon their interests. Hiey had banded together and subscribed large fighting-.funds, with the result that the campaign was more vigorous than anything of the kind ever seen in Australia before Another reason was that at the last general •ct.eetieins ,a verv Urong ifeeling was running on .account of the DeakinCook fusion, and, in Mr l''.sher's opinion,, '-.there is no doubt tliat tens of thousands of people who, at the general elections, voted ".■•.gainst the Deakin party Mere this time voting against the proposals-of the Labour party. Probably the most signiiicunt reason of du, however, was tho fact that there was a very strong split amongst tho Labour followers. Mr M'G.nvan. Premier of New South AVales. and practically' the father of the Australian Labour party, had expressed hin;s:!f as emphatically against 'the- proposals, and MrW. A. Holman, the New South Wales Attorney-Generai', and probably the most e-onspicuous figure- m Labour politics in the Commonwealth, had opposed as long as he was ablo the altitude taken up by Mr Hughes. There w;:is no doubt, added Mr Fisher, that right through the continent there was to-day. a feeling of great thankfulness tliat the Referenda issues were not endorsed at the poll's, and no one was more thoroughly delighted with the result than the strongest section of the Labour party, in Xew South Wales. They appeared t obe the only section of. the Labour party ill. Australia to realise that the carrying of the Referenda proposals meant- the extinction of State Parliaments and the probable extinction of the wages boards. Referring to election methods Mr Fisher said one could not fail to be struck by the difference between the tactics employed by sections of the Labour party in Australia and the conditions that usually exist here. In tlie Commonwealth quite a large section of the Labour party regarded it as hvpocrisv of the deepest dye to dare to go on the platform and" oppose a party mandate. It was not an uncommon thing to find public meetings turned into absolute pandemoniums lumen who were determined that the light to free speech only existed in the interests of the partv to which they belonged. "I tlrnk the intolerance of the Labour party at many of the meetings did a great deal to swell the majority against then:." said Mr Fisher. "'the sense of. fair plav amongst the public resenting the attitude thai Labour acivoiates too fre-Iv