DISCONTENT RIFE IN AUSTRALIA.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 150, 26 June 1931, Page 7

DISCONTENT RIFE IN AUSTRALIA.

MANY DEMONSTRATIONS TAKE PLACE IN CITIES. (Special to the “Star.”) AUCKLAND, June 26. What seemed like the first mutterings of real civil war were becoming apparent in Australia, said Mr E. W. Yates, a business man of Auckland, who has returned by the Ulimaroa from a short holiday in the Commonwealth. Depression was bad enough over there, he said, but what impressed him was the air of secrecy which the man in the street wore. Nobody seemed to trust anybody whom they did not really know, and topics discussed with acquaintances were merely banalities. The things which lay nearest their minds, the things which really mattered, were left unsaid. That attitude, he thought, was, in a measure, the result of the uncertainty engendered by the wavering policy of the Government. Nobody knew what was what. That was in the more comfortable classes. In the poorer classes discontent was rife, and was being openly expressed. One expression of that dissatisfaction, aggravated by the real and continued want of food and warmth, was the anti-eviction demonstrations, an account of one of which appeared in the Press a few days ago. These demonstrations, it was commonly admitted, were organised by the Communistic element. Such demonstrations were common in the larger cities, and only an unusually large one found its way into the papers. “Just Like France Again.** The description which had appeared in the papers of the clash between the police an 4 the “ anti-evictionists *’ had by no means been exaggerated, he added. The house was in Bankstown, an industrial area in Sydney. Mr Yates said that the scene was just like France again. The whole house was surrounded with a barbed wire entanglement, the windows were wired and barricaded, wire was twisted round the verandahs, and then, to cap it all, the whole lot was connected to the electric main. The first thing that the police did when they arrived on the scene was to disconnect the electricity. Then they tried to charge the house. They had to snip their way through a series of wire fences under a shower of bricks. One police officer received a fractured skull, and it is believed that he will die. Other injuries, less serious, were common. Someone used a firearm. . When the police eventually reached the house, they had to smash open the windows, and then ensued a ferocious battle. The house was absolutely wrecked.