Coalition in Victoria.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18236, 21 November 1924, Page 8

Coalition in Victoria.

To those who have become a littlo tired of Mr Wilford as comedian, recent events in Victoria, with their suggestion of comic opera, should furnish a change. For there is surely Boinething burlesque in the spectacle of 27 Labourites in a House of 65 pretending that they arc a Government because tho two parties opposed to them have quarrelled over the division of the spoils which they know they can seize when they want to. It is also in keeping with the plot that the leader of the weakest of the three parties should become Premier as our cables this week announced ho bad done. But nothing is too absurd to be possible when three political parties urged by their high regard for the people's welfare are fighting for 12 Cabinet seats. The Premiership and five other portfolios was the price that the 13 Country

Party members demanded from the defeated Nationalists for their support against Labour, and when they found that they conld not sell they made a present "of their holding to the Nationalists' foes. The Labour leaders must have realised that the gift was really only a loan, but they would scarcely anticipate such a short term. It can have been only the belief that the cause was worth the sacrifice that prompted the Nationalists to agree to a Coalition apparently on the original terms of the Country Party, for it must hare been obvious that sooner or later the Labour Government would be forced by the rank and file of the party into introducing important legislation which the Country Party could not allow to pass. The experience, however, will not have been a misfortune if the Nationalists and the five self-styled Liberals learn from it the folly of internal strife and quarrelling. In the meantime "Victoria has a more stable Government than she has had for a year or more. The knowledge that this might be was the Governor's justification for taking the unusual course of refusing a request for a dissolution. The whole story, however, reflects small credit on the leaders of the Country Party, and is a striking example of the absurd and evil effects of triangular scrambles for office.