FIRST SHOT FIRED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 59, 12 March 1943, Page 5

FIRST SHOT FIRED

AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL ELECTIONS FADDEN ON SOCIALISM Recd. 6.50 p.m. Sydney, March 11. The first shots in the Federal election campaign, which is to be held at the end ot this year, were fired by the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. A. W. Fadden, addressing the annual Country Party Conference. Describing the Curtin Government as “dangerous,” Mr. Fadden said the comin? election would probably be the most important in Australia’s history. The issue to be fought would be socialisation, which the people would be invited by the Labour Party to accept as a basis ot post-war construction. The Opposition took the view that private enterprise and ownership should be defended. While it regarded as essential a proper system of price control and favoured safeguards against exploitation, it considered enterprise for profit and reward should not be suppressed and should be freed of the doctrinaire of Socialist restriction. Unless electors removed the present Government socialisation would surely come. Mr. Fadden said that Government neglect of primary Industries had been shameful. The entire edifice ot primary production had been shaken because of manpower difficulties and the discrepancy between production costs and selling prices.

The resolution adopted by the conference included a clause: “That freedom of the individual be reaffirmed as a national ideal, and that the party wage unrelenting war upon every effort to introduce, under cover of war necessity, restrictions which cut down that liberty and run counter to the exercise of full democratic rights.”

AUSTRALIAN MORTGAGES

Recd. 6.10 p.m. Canberra, March 11. A Bill to establish a mortgage bank department of the Commonwealth Bank passed all its stages in the House ot Representatives after a Government amendment that loam should not exceed 70 per cent, of security had been agreed to. The Bill, which is intended for the assistance of primary producers, provides no interest maximum. The Federal Treasurer, Mr. J. B. Chifley, said that fluctuating interest rates prevented the fixation of a maximum.