THE RIFT IN THE LUTE

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 2, 4 January 1932, Page 6

THE RIFT IN THE LUTE

Rather sooner than was expected, the difficulty between the United Australia Party and the Country Party has come to a head, in the formation of a purely U.A.P. Government. To-day's cablegrams state that the London Stock Exchange does not welcome this Australian New Year gift; and a Queenslander among the Country Party M.H.R.'s has given the issue a personal turn by declaring that the new Prime Minister, Mr. J. A. Lyons, is "drunk with success." Whether the failure to extend the U.A.P.-C.P. campaign co-operation into a Coalition Cabinet is due in any degree to the personalities of the two leaders—Mr. Lyons and Dr. Earle Page—we cannot pretend to say. The personal factor almost always counts. But no one needs to imagine personalities in order to find a very real "nigger" in the Federal "woodpile." As in Britain, it is the tariff issue. The winning combination in both countries includes all sorts of opinions for or against tariffs. These tariff differences might be permitted, as in Australia, to break the national combination—a course the dangers of which we have already stressed—or might be suppressed until such time as the national combination, ruling as a Cabinet, has discharged its national function—the balancing of Budgets, the balancing of external trade, the securing of debt service obligations, the stabilisation of currency, etc. Britain, unlike Australia, is persevering with the National Government. '. Its initial steps have already been taken, without outward signs of disruption. To get to the essentials of the question, it is necessary, however, to carry the comparison further. It is true that the tariff is, in both countries, an underlying issue, but in Australia it is even more than that. Britain has a tariff to be, Australia a tariff in being. Statesmen contemplating a tariff-to-be have the capacity to move cautiously, for their "mutual accommodation." They may, as in Britain, start with an emergency tariff to deal with abnormal importations. For such a tariff can be pleaded abnormal times, price upheavals, the need of specific temporary interference with the course of external trade. But in Australia the tariff is already at a high point. If the Country Party has demanded an immediate and substantial "cut" in protective duties, there is not the same room for "mutual accommodation" between manufacturers who are clinging in depression to tariff-rafts, and farmers who insist on certain immediate free imports. Assuming, then, that the Country Party, returning to the House of Representatives with increased numbers, has insisted that its leader become Minister of Customs with a free hand to deal with high duties, the development of an impasse can. be easily enough imagined. But it is none the less to be deplored. Australia is ill. Australia will not live, nor die, by tariffs alone; and as there are more grievous complications, and more imminent ones, it is a pity that the doctors could not have remained in consultation. In a time when the whole structure is threatened, are not their points of agreement much greater than their points of difference? Besides, there is the moral damage of dissension, already noted in London.