The Administration of Sydney.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19163, 21 November 1927, Page 8

The Administration of Sydney.

Recent cable news from Sydney makes it fairly clear that the Sydney City Council is about to pay the penalty of three years of corrupt misgovernment. The triennial elections to the Council would ordinarily have taken place at the beginning of next month, but before that time Mr Bavin, unless something unexpected occurs, will have put through the Assembly a measure to replace the Council by a Board of Commissioners. The remedy seems a drastic one, but in three years of Labour rule the administration of Sydney, has become such an open scandal that only a complete removal of political influence will effect a cure, a fact which has been admitted by the non-Labour aldermen on the Council. For the last three years the administration of Sydney has been practically a conspiracy between the Labour majority and the municipal employees to exploit the city for their own benefit, a state of affairs which illustrates one of the great perils of Labour government —the domination of Labour politicians by the industrial oligarchy on which they depend for power. Labour has made great play with the word "democracy," but experience of the Lang Government and a Labour City Council has shown the people of New South Wales that for the Labour Party government by the people means government by unionists. The methods that Labour has used to fight the proposed suspension of the Council are an amusing indication of how much store the New South Wales Party sets by its principles. Profiting by the presence of Mr Amery in Sydney, the Labour aldermen decided to send a deputation to him asking him to intervene on their behalf, notwithstanding the fact that when Mr Lang tried to abolish the Legislative Council and his opponents appealed to the Dominions Office, the Labour Party denounced strongly the suggestion that the Home Government had any right to interfere in New South Wales. When this failed the Labour aldermen enquired, with some justification, why no move had been made to abolish the Assembly where, they asserted, there was even more corruption than in the City Council. In support of this they mentioned several recent scandals, all of which involved Mr Lang's supporters. In a Party which seemingly regards government as a licensed form of piracy such recriminations are not unnatural.