FEDERAL POLITICS.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 February 1918, Page 1

FEDERAL POLITICS.

SYDNEY, .Jail. 25. Interest in political affairs for the moment has resolved itself into a sort of guessing EVcryone is trying to guess how long the present Nationalist, Win-the-Wav .Cabinet will hang together, and what will happen when it bursts asunder. There is unanimity on only one point+—namely, the life of the Cabinet, will be short. Mr Hughes’s Government, as was expected, survived the No-Confidence motion moved bv the loader of the Labour Opposition. The voting was on purely party lines, but the Government bad some anxious moments. There was a considerable section of the old Liberal Party which was restless. It had never brought itself to love the stranger who had been imnorted to act as leader, and it had) allowed its fine feelings—or such fine feelings as can survive political turmoil in Australia—to ho oul raged by the manner in which Mr Hughes broke the pledge he gave that he would not attempt to' govern if the referendum were defeated. This section was eager to see Mr Hughes deposed, in it- it was scared into inactivity by the threat of the followers of Mr Hughes that they would join the Labour party again if their lender were not Prime Minister. Then there was another section which did its utmost to secure coalition with the Labour Opposition, with a view to forming a coalition Cabinet for the period of the war. This most laudable' plan was smothered by the Labour hatred of Mr Hughes. The Labour men were not at all averse to coalition, but thev would not have Mr Hughes at

any price. So the Rational Party not unnaturally regards its leaders as a sort of Old Man of the Sea. It cannot proceed without him, apparently, and yet ho is the burden that prevents it from making any real progress. This is a state of affairs that obviously cannot endure, and already there is much talk of ft© collapse of the Party. Mr Hughes must 20 ;—they all insist on that. With Mr Hughes will also go a number of Labour men who left the official Labour Party on the conscription issue, and who will gladly return to the fold. It is doubtful if enough members will he left in the National Party to keen its Cabinet

in office. No one wants to see the country in the turmoil of another general election, hut, in view of the pronounced restlessness in the National Party, it looks like the only way out. >