“BAD BOY.”

Waikato Times, Volume 109, Issue 18347, 5 June 1931, Page 2

“BAD BOY.”

A LANG STUDY. TOO MODERATE? Frank Russell writes from Melbourne to the Sydney Sun — The Premier of New South Wales (Mr Lang), the most discussed personality in Australia at present, stepped from the Council Chamber at the luncheon adjournment of the Premiers’ Conference in high good humour, He had just been expressing himself pungently to his brother Premiers, and the exercise had given him a glow. “Care for a talk, Mr Lang?” I asked him, adding, “Let's walk awhile and see Melbourne.” "You'd better be careful of your reputation,” he said cheerfully. “It won’t do you any good to be seen with Australia’s prize ‘Bad Man.’ ” “I’ll risk it,” I told him, and we set :out.

“You know,” he began, as we descended Parliament House steps, “I like Melbourne, though it doesn’t seem to want to have anything to do with me. I was born in Victoria and married a Victorian girl—Bairnsdale (way." . ■ “Educated here?” I asked curiously.

“School at Bairnsdale. So you see,” he laughed, “the taxpayers of Victoria helped to make me what 1 am. Tell them that.” “That’s a big responsibility to saddle us with,” I retorted. “Anything likely to happen over there?” I asked him, nodding towards Parliament House. “You never can tell,” was his reply. “They seem to be wasting time and talking about nothing, but yau know what Carlyle—was it Carlyle?—said about the French Revolution —that no one knew it was happening until the day before. It’s that way with the Conference. Any moment some one may make a sensible remark or something may happen.” Laughs at Caricatures. Was this the man, I reflected, who Is supposed to be only an echo of others? His voice boomed happily, his laugh was frequent, and only the out-thrust jaw reminded me of the Wild Man of political caricature. I mentioned this to him. “Do the caricaturists get under your skifi at all? 1 ' “Not a bit. 1 get a good laugh out of them. Damned clever, too, some of them. No, the Press has built up a public figure of Mr Lang the Bad Man, just as they built up a figure of Jim Scullin, the Strong Man. When they' had finished with him they started building Joe Lyons. We come and we go. What does it matter. The man Is nothing; tho country is everything.” He broke off to laugh. “You know, it’s funny, but I get a lot of satisfaction out of what the papers say of me.” “Do you eat men alive?” I wanted to know. “I say what I think,” he retorted, “and my reputation follows naturally. For a politician to say what he thinks is pretty startling. Claims Some Credit. “I don’t mind being a bad boy,” he confessed. “It has its advantages. The other States are going to have a job to pay everything they owe, and when they default people will say with bated breath: ‘lsn’t it terrible? Victoria has defaulted; South Australia has defaulted!’ But no one will ever say, ‘New South Wales has defaulted.’ They will just say, ‘New South Wales was all right. It wn3 Just that terrible fellow Lang.’ I will pass on, and New South Wales’s reputation will alone be white and shining.” And ho grinned happily at the bizarre picture he had conjured up. “One thing I can boast of having achieved. I have brought about the reduction of interest. They’ll take away any credit from me; but all the same, I did it.” . “How did you arrive at your figure of 3 per cent.?” I asked. "Well, I wasn’t afraid to face the facts,” he answered. “I knew what had to be paid; I knew’ what was coming in, and I first of all worked ■ out what 5 per cent, would accomplish. Nothing; then 4 per cent.? Nothing. Three and a half, three and a quarter? Not enough. Then three? Still not enough; but I’m a very moderate fellow’, and I really couldn’t go any further. So I stopped at 3 per oent. I shouldn’t have stopped, but we’re all weak.” And again he grinned, enjoying him- ■ self hugely. Rough Customer. "How do you get on with the other Premiers?” was my next question. “Well, I’m a rough sort of customer,” he said. “When I think a thing I say it, and I’ve got a trick of saying it very definitely when I feel It definitely. When polite men, well brought up, come to me and say: ‘Well, Mr Lang, I should rather be inclined to put it like this, Mr Lang, if you don’t mind, and begging your pardon,’ 1 get impatient. I’ve been badly brought up, you see. My idea is that if you haven’t enough money to pay your debts and feed your people you should first of all feed your people and then build up your Industires so that you may at last pay your dobts.” A Point Unanswered. Mr Lang did not elucidate the knotty point of how, after refusing to make economies among all sorts of sheltered people, you arc to build up your industries if in the meantime you have forfeited the respect and confidence of those on whom your industries rely for I heir revival. But then you can’t think of everything. “Those fellows,” ho boomed, meaning the other Premiers, "talked to me about sacrilles. One asked me why our members did not set the example of sacrifice by accepting a cut in their parliamentary salaries. “'Why,' 1 said, ‘we've taken a 13 per cent, cut, from the Premier downwards, and we’ve had it for a long lime, hut we didn't go yelling about it all over the place.’ 1 found that the critics had made only a to per cent. cut. That's the sort of thing you've got to put up with." And Mr Lang went in to lunch.