OUTLOOK FOR NEW SOUTH WALES

Hokitika Guardian, 23 May 1931, Page 6

OUTLOOK FOR NEW SOUTH WALES

oatastrophi

(Sydney Bulletin)

How much longer is the Governor of New South Wales going to put up with his present advisers? What degree of suffering must tig- people experience, to what depth of disgrace must the country descend, before Sir Phillip Ganu> decides that these unfaithful servants must gu befonj their masters to be judged? Masters the electors were designed to he under the Constitution, but for six calamitous months they have been the vie- 1 t-ims of their faithless and incapable servants; and, unless Sir Phillip Game intervenes, victims they will remain until there is a general crash, involving the very grave possibility ol bloodshed.

It -should not be necessary to remind the Governor of the programme on which his advisers were elected, but perhaps it is. Their leader pledged himself in his policy speech “to find the money to complete all those uncompleted public works in which many millions of borrowed money are lying idle;” and he hasn’t found a red cent. He undertook (as Air Sc'dliu did a twelve month earlier) that work would be provided for all; and one of liis Ministers, the drivelling Ely. lips confessed that “there' are 84,000 persons in the metropolitan area and 20.000 in the country on the dole.” This although the unemployed-relief, tax, which Mr Ely’s leader denounced when his predecessors imposed it, has been raised from threepence to a shilling in the pound on salaries and wages and to 7ld in the pound on property income for the 1929-30 year. The 7-td tax is being imposed on .fanners who have seen the price of wheat tumble to Is 7d a bushel at siding. A market over a period of years was “guaranteed’’ to these wieK-cdly-deceived men ; worse still. Mr Lang said at I’arkes (the sentences being subsequently published in Ids party’s election advertisements). “Return Labor and restore ffhe State to the prosperity of 1925 and 1927. /AA’e promised and we paid 7s 6d a bushel for wheat. What we did then we can do now.” Other items on a list of election promises that stretched almost to the crack of doom were restoration of widow’s pensions a nd family-endowment payments on the pre-Bavin scale lit. hasn’t been done) repeal of “the legislation by which Public Service salaries were reduced” (it, hasn’t been repealed), “Rehabilitation of the finances of the Government railways and tramways” (they have gone from had to worse) and

■■finance on the same lines as in 1927. when we finished with a surplus of £1,300,000” — a record deficit of £B.000,000 is now expected, though with 10 months of the financial year gone the State is without a budget. Above all. Sir Phillip Game’s principal adviser gave the electors his word that the contracts entered into with the public creditors would b« honored. “Of this the people can he assured” he said in big policy speech, as reported in his own newspaper. “The Australian Labor movement would not permit for one moment any of its leaders to ho associated with a policy of repudiation. The Labor party sets its face against all repudiation.” He made this express declaration at Auborn on September 22ud. In February lie insulted bis fellow-Pi’emiers by asking them “to •techie” fins he had done) “to pay no further interest to British bondholders until Britain has dealt with Australian overseas debts in the same manner as she has -settled her own foreign drill with the U.S.A., and “to reduce interest on the Government borrowings in Australia to 3 per ce-t.” In Aierch he introduced his Reduction of Interest Bill, which was rejected hv the Legislative- Council. On April 1 he refused to pay interest, at the l-ate of 3 per cent, to the British, who bought £66,306.300 worth of Australian produce in 1929-30. hut he paid interest iat the rate of £5 8s Sd, per cent, to the Americans, who bone lit £6.233.700 worth of Australian produce in 1929-30.

The State civil servants had £3.776,900 of their superannuation funds invested in N.S.AV. Government securities on June 30th, and their organisation supported the Long mob at the general election; so this favored section was exempted from the Reduction of Interest Bill. The Government Savings Bank was also excluded, but only as regards interest payable to it by clients of its Rural Bank branch, its Home department and the like, not as regards interest payable to it by the Government. Out of 70 millions of deposits it had advanceu over 29 millions to the Government at an average rate of ol per cent., and this was to be “scaled down” to 3 per cent., if the Government chose. For months past withdrawals had trreatlv exceeded deposits, and when the Scaler Government’s proposals were subjected to criticism there was naturally, a run on the bank. The alarm was allayed somewhat- by the action of the Legislative Council, hut it- was revived when the Governmenttried to rob British investors in N. S.AAI stocks (the National Health insurance Commissioners, who pay benefits to aged and inform workers among others) and proceedings for the re-,-ovorv of the money were begun by the Commonwealth, which, with the approval of 764,446 N.S.AV. electors, Ims taken over and is responsible tor State debts. At Easter the Commissioners published agonised two-pace appeals to depositors to leave thenmoney in the bank (addressing them j through the “Labour Daily,” among.

other organs of opinion), but it had become impossible to fnscore confidence in the institution while the Scaler Government retained the slightest vestige of control. On Wednesday the head of the . Scaler Government W as reduced to imploring the hated Commonwealth to take it over on the Commonwealth’s own terms; on Thursday. what, until -the Lang ‘•plan” wa's invented, h a d been the greatest Savings Bank in Australia, and one U f fche greatest in the world, dossed it, s doors. The Scaler Government, had aimed at the “hungry bondholders’’ of its diseased imagination and hit the best element among its own supporters—thrifty working people who ha c l made provision for bad times, sickness and old age.

f - What more does the Governor want convince him that he should dismiss this guilty Administration «nd appoint other advisers who will make it their first duty to consult the people? He has ample authority to do this if lie will only exercise it. He is the “guardian of the Constitution” (the words are from the “Official \e a r Book for 1926-27, when another Lang Ministry was in office) and is “bound to see that the great powers with wiiich he is entrusted are not used otherwise than in the public interest :” he “may net in the exercise ol his powers an. ( ] authority in opposition 1.0 the opinion of his Ministers, reporting the matter to the Secretary ol State for the Dominions without delay;” lie “possesses important spheres of independent action, sucli ns granting dissolution of Parliament;” lie may remove and suspend officers of State. With capital in full flight and the State Savings Bank out 'of action; with the .Government plainly bankrupt in Brains and reputation as well as money; with industry stifled, and 29.2 per cent, of trade-unionists (the Commonwealth Statistician’s figures for the March quarter) clamouring for the work which fools in their mi bridled folly promised them, and Moscow agents active among the younger men. surely Sir Phillip Game will realise that it is ids duty to “act in the exercise of his powers and authority in opposition to the opinion ol his Ministers” and send those Ministers about their business. Not for another day should John Thomas Lang be permitted to continue a s chief adviser of the Crown in New South Wales. Liar, lawbreaker, disloyalist, defaulter, destroyer, h e is not fit to be Premier of a self-governing British i comm unitv. If he had bis deserts lie would be in the dock.