LABOUR IN AUSTRALIA.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10416, 21 March 1912, Page 1

LABOUR IN AUSTRALIA.

ITS IMPENDING DOWNFALL. [From Our Cornksfontient.J WELLINGTON. March 20. .Mr S. Sampson, one of the \ lctovian members of the Federal House of Representative; 4, who passed through Christchurch Inst week in the course of a holiday run through New Zealand, does not expect the Commonwealth Labour Government to survive the appeal to the electors next year. "The signs of the times are all against Mr Fisher and his colleagues," said the visitor, chatting to a representative of the Lyttelton Times." " Something may happen (luring the next few months to change the current of public opinion, but if it doesn't happen the Labour Party will be badly braten sit the approaching elections." When asked for the why and the wherefore, Mr Sampson disclaimed any wish to pass judgment upon his political opponents. " But the facts are there to speak for themselves," be added. "The Labour' Party after years of strenuous organising and fighting, in which they set an example to all of us, captured Parliament and set up a Ministry of their own, but their representatives hadn't been in office very long before they realised that some of the reforms they had promised were utterly impracticable, and that others could come only with the progress of years. Mr Fisher did his best under the circumstances. He went as far as his sober judgment would allow him to go, hut he did not go far enough to satisfy his friends outside Parliament. They began to complain and then they tried to mend the pace themselves and to mako impossible demands. The industrial unrest which was to have ended with tho advent of the Labour Ministry became more acute than ever. Strikes occurred all over the country, and Mr Fisher, tho chosen saviour of the workers, was no moro able to deal with them than his predecessor had been." The strikes, Mr Sampson thinks, were duo rather to an impression among the workers .that a Ministry of their own could at once, improve their conditions than to the existence of any real trouble between the masters and the men. Labour having captured Parliament imagined that with the aid of Parliament it could capture everything else it desired, but responsibility had taught Mr Fisher the lesson his followers had failed to learn, and though he made some desperate efforts to pacify his impatient party it continued to clamour for more.

Tho dissatisfaction of the workers, according to Mr Sampson, in not tho only trouble the Federal Government has to fear. Though Ministers have failed to give their immediate supporters more than a fraction of vrhat they expected they have given them enough to alarm those Liberals who voted with tho Labour party at the last general election. These less impetuous souls will go over to the Fusion party which, in the natural evolution of politics, is becoming more and more Liberal every day, and the dissatisfaction among tho" workers will be sufficient to do the rest.

" T don't want to pose as a prophet," Mr Sampson said, in conclusion, and least of all do t «;ant to decry Mr Fisher and his colleagues in tlu-ir absence, but I feel sure, that unless something at present very improbable occurs before tho end of tho year the Labour Government will return from tho polk in a minority and will have to make way for a really progressive Administration. called by some other name, that will discourage tho class war,' and strive for tho promotion of the best interests of the whole community."