AUSTRALIAN POLITICS

Hokitika Guardian, 16 December 1929, Page 2

AUSTRALIAN POLITICS

MOVES FOR PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. SYDNEY, December 7. The launching of the new Australian Party under the leadership ot Mr W. M. Hughes, synchronises with the hig move in New South Wales by Mr Peter Lougblin, ex-Labour Minister, for sweeping Parliamentary reform, including the principles of non-Party Cabinets and no selection ballots. Politicians of existing Parties are inclined to ridicule these moves, especially the non-Party Cabinet idea, but, after all, what have often proved to be big causes have often had small beginnings. As far as the new Hughes Party is concerned, the obvious fact is that neither the La Ism r Party, as represented by the Trades Hall machine, nor the Nationalists, as represented by the Consultative Council, are today acceptable to thousands of |>eoplc. Evidence of this was the strong sup-

port accorded to Mr Richard Yindeyer, K.C., at the recent Federal election. A leading Sydney newspaper commends Mr Hughes’s new Party as “a chance to show the Party leaders that it is the people who must rule, not Consultative Councils, and Big Fours. Labour Leagues, money bags, union secretaries, imported agitators, and the wire-pullers of the political organisation.” With regard to the other Parliamentary reform and its leader, the Labour

Party in New (south Wales lost one of its ablest men when Air Peter Louglilin broke with it and sacrificed a career as well as the emoluments of office. With him, as bis first lieutenants are Mr V. W. E. Goodin, who cut adrift from Labour at the same time as Air Lougblin, and Air Peter Board, formerly Director of Education, and now prominent because of bis association with the Australian-made Preference League.