Challenge to Parliamentary Government

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28265, 1 May 1957, Page 12

Challenge to Parliamentary Government

■When a man is elected to Parliament he must represent all his electors as best he can, and when a Parliamentary Government is formed its responsibility is to the legislature. The electors alone have the right to decide when members of Parliament have lost the confidence of the electorate. The whole basis ofc Parliamentary government is threatened when an unrepresentative and irresponsible assembly, such as the Queensland central executive of the Australian Labour Party, issues orders to the Ministry. The Labour Premier of Queensland (Mr V. C. Gair) has stood to his constitutional responsibility by rejecting this arrogant challenge. In expelling him the executive has harmed chiefly itself, not Mr Gair.’ In Australia, as in New Zealand, it has long been accepted that Labour politicians are bound in general by party decisions made by organisations without any constitutional standing. In practice, it usually happens either that the Parliamentary leaders are able to control the party or that the outside control is exercised discreetly, though there have been cases in New Zealand politics (and in Christchurch local politics) where the party has blatantly overridden its political representatives. Though Australia furnishes more striking exceptions to the rule of discretion, none is really comparable with the Queensland incident. The offence alleged against Mr Gair was not that he had rejected the party’s instruction to introduce a compulsory three weeks holiday under all State awards but that (with the concurrence of the Labour caucus) he had decided that Queensland could not yet afford to make the change. This is altogether different from the expulsion of Mr W. M. Hughes in the First World War, where the issue was one of strong Labour principle—conscription. No great party principle was invoked to discipline Mr Gair, as the narrow margin in the central executive (35 votes to 30) showed. The pettiness of the issue also accounted for the courageous support given Mr Gair by most of the Parliamentary Labour Party and by all but one of his Cabinet colleagues. Like Mr Gair they refused to accept trades hall domination, or rather domination by a section of the trades hall. The Australian Workers’ Union is prominent in this dispute. Mr J. Bukowski, Queensland president of the Labour Party, is also Queensland

secretary of • the Australian Workers’ Union. He made a strong attack on Mr'Gair when the Premier obtained Cabinet support for his attitude. “ What “Mr Gair or Cabinet does is no “ different from what the Tories “do ”, he said. “. . . Cabinet “is nothing. The Q.C.E. is the “ ruling body of the A.L.P., and “not Mr Gair or Cabinet. This “ only indicates that Mr Gair is, “ the same now as he was in “ Hobart—a scab ”. This has all the appearances of another Labour faction fight, something like those over the industrial group movement. The situation obviously cannot be left where it is. Other parties in the Queensland Parliament will help Mr Gair maintain his constitutional position against an unconstitutional challenge; but they cannot do so indefinitely. Either the Labour must be closed, or the Gair Government must appeal to the electors. The Queensland executive, which hopes to have the support of Dr. H. V. Evatt, will not give way easily. Mr J. Schmella, secretary of the executive, has promised to reveal, if necessary, further reasons for the expulsion of Mr Gair, because the executive has “ a lot of ammuni- “ tion in reserve ”. To this Mr Gair has defiantly replied: “There’s plenty I can tell, too. “ I might ask if my expulsion “ was demanded by the oil “ companies ”. Mr Gair recently insisted on legislation banning one-brand petrol stations against the objection of the party executive. If an election is held, with rival Labour parties making their disclosures, the campaign should be lively, even by Australian standards.