The Timaru Herald SATURDAY, APRIL 5, 1930. THE POLITICAL SITUATION

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18536, 5 April 1930, Page 8

The Timaru Herald SATURDAY, APRIL 5, 1930. THE POLITICAL SITUATION

Since the Labour Party has discovered that its continued association with the present Administration is not, likely to strengthen its position in the country, the United Party has had reason to sigh to be. saved from its friends. Obviously the alliance is becoming irksome, and the Parliamentary Labour Party appears to have made up its mind to attack the Government in the hope that electors with short memories will forget the part played by Labour in accepting election promises at face value and then putting the United Party on the. Treasury benches. The latest display of temper, however, is more likely to discredit Labour than hamper the work of the Government. We are told by the Alliance of Labour that “the Government is breaking its promises and is attempting to fool workers.” Hence the extraordinary decision of that weird organisation of unhappy memories, the Alliance of Labour, to declare “black” the committee appointed by the Government to investigate the operations of the Workers’ Compensation Act. The only result of this strange decision will he to make the spokesmen for Labour look exceedingly foolish. But more definite and less respectful are some of the utterances of the leaders of the Parliamentary Labour Party. One of Auckland’s Labour members, who is obviously “playing to the gallery” in anticipation of a lively by-election contest in which Labour will make a desperate bid to capture the seat, confesses that “the political situation is very complicated and unsatisfactory.” Just so! No doubt Labour finds the situation not only unsatisfactory, but very extremely embarrassing, more particularly in view of the falling stocks of the copartners in one of the most disastrous political muddles in the history of New Zealand. But Mr Jordan does not spare the other party to the alliance which has failed so miserably. Speaking at a Labour rally in Auckland the other night, the Labour Member for Manukau said: Although the Prime Minister is a sick man, he is still half the United Party. He is not as sick physically as many of the members are mentally. To say that they are a party is to say something untrue. They are a collection of men who wanted to get into Parliament, and the Prime Minister has no support from many of them. They have not been a team. A Minister of the Crown told me that the party had done its best. I said: It has done its best. That is the trouble and we know that we can expect nothing better.

And yet tiie Labour M.P’s have been marshalled on the side of the United Party with tlie sole object of helping the new Government to retain the Treasury benches. Presumably, however, very little can be said in favour of the present Administration. Mr Jordan, however, completely excels himself. “When a party offers itself to the country and says that it can and will do certain things,” says Mr Jordan in deploring the lack of sincerity in present-day politicians, “there is a moral responsibility lo perform its promises. If a private person gave an undertaking as the United Party did and failed as signally as that party, he would go before the Supreme Court on charges of misrepresentation and breach of contract.” And yet, during last session, Mr Jordan and his parliamentary colleagues repeatedly found themselves in the lobby consorting with the members of a Party whom he now suggests are guilty of misrepresentation and breach of contract! Another member of the Parliamentary Labour Party had something to say this week, which can hardly be regarded with feelings other than humiliation by the members of the United Party. In effect, Mr Peter Eraser tells the electors of New Zealand that the United Party must “fetch and carry” for the Socialists, or make way for a Labour Government. In other words, if the United Government will demean itself by taking its orders from the king maker and his comrades, then Labour may deign to consent to the present Administration continuing in office. Such a position is positively intolerable. It is generally recognised that although the general election of 1928 yielded an indecisive result, as far as the principal anti-Socialists parties were concerned, the country indicated in the most emphatic fashion, its refusal to tolerate Labour domination. Hence the irony of the situation which Labour is attempting to create at the price .of temporary reprieve of the doomed Administration .now in office but not in power. Discerning electors are not blind to the danger that reposes in the present unhealthy situation; hence it is not surprising that there is a definite swing over of public opinion in favour of a return to stable political conditions which can come only by the return of a strongly-entrenched anti-Socialist Administration with a backing of a sufficiently sti'ong majority to repulse the attacks of the Labour Party and resist the insatiable demands of the Socialists.