CANDID BISHOP

Hokitika Guardian, 31 October 1930, Page 5

CANDID BISHOP

STRAIGHT TALK TO AUSTRALIANS.

“TIME TO WAKE UP.”

Dr. Grotty, Bishop of Bathurst, on his return to Sydney from the Lambeth Conference, made a trenchant and stimulating statement of his views of the problems that confront the nation today. Interviewed by the “Herald,” he pleaded that party hostility should cease, and that a creative partnership in service should be developed. The present crisis in Australian affairs, Dr. Grotty said, was for the moment receiving a more than welcome publicity in Great Britain. With such opportunities that had been given him to speak of Australia, he had sought to emphasise that in the last resort the final sanities of the Australian temperament would reassert themselves, and that under the pressure of hardship Australia would work out to those economic realisms and those social sanities that would lead to a more stable and chastened prosperity. “Speaking, however, to one’s own people,” said Dr Grotty, “one would

say that it is high time for them to wake up. We must move out from a public opinion, self-centred, indifferent, and dumb—save where its own personal interests are concerned—into a new and living Australian patriotism. “Two things are needed. First, we must stop hurling bricks at each other’s heads and pull together on problems and confusions that our own hands have fashioned, and for which all classes are to blame. Our public leaders must be told that we want constructive policies and disinterested Australian states' manship—not- party propaganda and tiresome personal abuse. The}’ must tell the people the truth, and not make the people foolish promises which they must know they cannot possibly fulfil. Otherwise, retribution, swift and sure, will come from the people whose eyes are soon to be opened by the march of facts.

“Second, there must develop in Australia some astringent tonic Ifor the flabby soul of the times. Here the privileged classes must give the lead, for they have most to lose and mast to give Australia cannot ask one set of people to work merely to make another set of people rich. It is a creative partnership in service that is‘needed in the common effort for Australia’s good, and it is no use calling on the workers to work for any ideal less spacious and commanding.”

“The workers, too,” added Dr Crotty, “must learn this—a high standard of living we can have, and must have in Australia, but we cannot have a high standard of living combined with a low standard of work. Still less can it coexist with a . destructive conspiracy against co-operative fellowship in, industrial effort and advance.