NO ELECTION.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18888, 31 December 1926, Page 12

NO ELECTION.

MR LANG WILL STAY. NEW SOUTH WALES POLITICS. (PBOSf OUR "OWN CORRESPONDENT.) SYDNEY, December 22. Much to the disgust of the Nationalists, who have been building buoyantly on an early appeal to the country, there is not, after all, to be a general election in the immediate future. Although the Lang Government escaped defeat on the floor of the House in November only by promising to go to the country within four months, for which period it was granted supply, this can bo said to Mr Lang's credit: that he wanted, and still desires, an election to clear the political atmosphere, and that he was opposed to the compromise arrived at between the caucus and two of three breakaways, whereby a general election will be staved off, by an agreement on the part of the Government to repudiate completely the dictatorship which gave rise to tho crisis, and to give the country extra representation under the new redistribution scheme, and priority in any legislation passed by it for the remainder of the life of the present Parliament. The Government, however, can hang on only by a hair's breadth, and it will be surprising if it runs its full term. An immediate election has been avoided, but it is obvious that both the caucus and the Cabinet are hopelessly divided. Tho general belief is that the agreement will not last very long. The terms of the agreement, involving the future of several of the pillars of the party, disclose too many possibilities of wide disagreements in caucus, to make the remainder of the life of the Government at all happy. The position, in a nutshell,' means that the Government will now function just as long as about three men permit it to function, Mr Loughlin, the leader of the rebel trinity, has dissociated himself entirely from the compromise and is now playing a lone hand.

Compulsory Dissolution? I Nothing quite like the present poli- \ tical position has occurred previously in the history of responsible representative government in New South Wales. The Nationalists, so certain of an early appeal that they made a pact with the Country party to put up a common fight against the enemy, are at the moment, very much in the position of Tantalus. Before them was the prospect of tasting of the fruits of office when, by another dramatic turn of events, they receded from. them. The question has now arisen' in the anti-Labour ranks whether the Governor cannot enforce a compulsory dissolution in view of the fact that the Government has dishonoured the distinct promise to Parliament of an election early in the New Year. The political crisis, which has not, by any means, improved the Government's prestige in the country, lias demonstrated above all else the value of by-elec-tions, which are impossible under the existing system of proportional representation. Ordinarily, the three men who broke away from the Government could and must, in the circumstances, have resigned their seats and, by way of testing public feeling, submitted themselves for re-election. Had they taken that extreme course, however, under the present electoral system, their seats would automatically have gone to other candidates, in all probability. Labour men, at the last general elections, and they would have been cast into the outer darkness. The fact that by-elec-tions are not permissible under proportional representation is regarded as the most striking defect of the system. It has certainly proved so in this case.