A POLITICAL CRISIS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 22, 9 January 1912, Page 2

A POLITICAL CRISIS.

When an irresistible popular Assembly meets an immovable Council which, to use Professor Goldwin Smith’s phrase, also “has the sap of popular election in its veins,” there is likely to be splinters flying, states Sydney “Daily Telegraph,” in commenting on the situation in South Australia. The problem of what is to be done would be removed if in its appeal to the constituencies the Labour Government were to have its slender majority converted into a minority. A Liberal Government is the only alternative, and it would not prolong a conflict with the Upper House on such a matter as a proposal to establish socialistic brickworks and timber yards. On the other hand, should Mr. Versa n and his colleagues be restored to their places on the Treasury benches, the Upper House might regard the fact as a sufficient instruction to itself, and refrain from further opposit'on to tlse schemes. But it is imaginable that it might contend that it owes responsibility only to the constituency which elected it, small though that constituency be in com-< parison with that of the Lower House, and therefore, persist in refusing to oass the items. In that event the Government could choose between two possible courses of action. It might drop the brickworks and timber yards, or it might advise the Governor to put into force the scheme for overcoming dead-locks adopted by Parliament in ISSI. This scheme permits the Governor to issue writs for the election of one or ..tjvj^jjiembers for each constituency of the Upper House, or to dissolve both Houses simultaneously. But even the Council partially or wholly newly elected might prove obstinate, and so ineffectually exhaust the constitutional possibilities for putting an end to the dead-lock. The South Australian Constitution does not go as far as that of the Commonwealth in providing that when all other means have failed the two Houses may sit as one and consider the disputed legislation, winch may bo carried or rejected by an absolute majority. The experience of Australian legislative government is, however, that the Upper Chamber yields in the long run to the popular will as expressed by the Assembly elections.