QUEENLAND POLITICS

Hokitika Guardian, 5 October 1920, Page 4

QUEENLAND POLITICS

SYDNEY, Sept. 2\

The Queensland general elections are fixed to take place on October bth. It is believed that the chances are in favour of the return of the somewhat extreme Labour Party to power, in spite of its very bad record of the past three years. When the election was being fought in 1915, the Labour Go'Vermnent bad a better record, financially, bring able to point to three successive surpluses; and the lion, treasurer, Mr Theodore, made a good electioneering phrase when he then declared that “finance is the test of good Government.” The anti-Labour forces are now very cruelly using this against him. It is a fact that in the three years subsequent to that 1915 declaration the Labour Government has recorded three thumping deficits — £253,500, £409,500, and £172,000. It claims a small surplus this year, but the figures have not yet been passed by the Auditor-General. Mr Theodore, now Premier, is doing his best to meet a flood of hostile comment; but he is obviously finding nothing harder to combat than the logic of his famous phrase. The Queensland producers have organised, and there are to be three parties in the election, as was the case in the recent Federal and .New South Wales elections—National, Labour, and Farmers. The Farmers’ only connexion with the Nationalists, from whom many of them have broken away, is their mutual hostility to the Labour Party. They will probably win a good number of seats from the Nationalists, but there is nothing to indicate that a sufficient number of Nationalists and Farmers will lie returned to put the extremists om of office. The Queensland National Party, for a long time past, has been very weak in leadership, and it does not appear to be very well organised. The Nationalists claim that the election is being fought on two issues—repudiation and finance. It is said that the Labour Government has been guilty of three acts of repudiation, which have damaged the reputation of the State. First, after lessees and financiers had been induced to invest in the Queensland pastoral industry, by which the industry was made to flourish, the Labour Government altered the law, and made a fundamental change in the rental system, which vitally affected the whole of the financial interests in the pastoral industry. Second, this Government passed a law over-riding the arrangement under which a London Company had been induced to establish and carry on a tramway system in Brisbane, so that the value of the whole property was depreciated just before it became due to be taken over by the Queensland authorities. Third, it amended its incometax laws so that a levy might be made

on incomes derived from State stock that had been sold as free from incometax. So far as finance is concerned the figures already quoted are 'the chief argument of the Nationalists. But along with those deficits they arc putting the taxation per head of the people. It was £l. 7s 2d in 1013-14, and £4 16s 6d in 1919-20. It is well-known that the Queensland Government, on account of its “extremeness,” was recently refused money in London. The Premier, as an election cry, is asking “Shall'we be ruled by the London capitalists?”