POLITICS IN NEW SOUTH WALES

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 22, 18 April 1927, Page 6

POLITICS IN NEW SOUTH WALES

RIGHT from the days of Responsible Government, New South Wales has been the storm centre of Australian politics, and since Federation, boisterousness in the affairs of State has been, if anything, accentuated. For this, the domination of the powerful Labour political organisation outside Parliament has been largely responsible. From its meetings in camera it has decided the policy of Labour Governments, and made things particularly unpleasant for the leaders of those Governments if they chanced to deviate a hair’s breadth from instructions. The present Administration has had as stormy a career as any in recent history. “Strong Man Lang,” democratic in that he has evolved from a street newsboy into a Premier, and been carried to the giddiest heights of politics by the democratic vote on a democratic platform, turned autocrat immediately Sir Dudley de Chair, the State Governor, refused to permit him to swamp the Legislative Council with Labour nominees that it might vote its own obliteration. Mr. Lang seeks to have the Governor recalled, but tlie Home authorities remain politely deaf. They meet the emissary he sends to London with smiles, and, possibiy, champagne, and tell him it is all a local matter in which they cannot interfere. So the Legislative Council remains, to throw out the Bill for its own abolition and to treat Mr. Lang’s Child Endowment Bill and other social legislation with derision. Now the conference of the Australian Labour Party has taken a hand. It suspended for a term of years the President of its Executive, its general secretary, and its assistant secretary, and, looking around for fresh heads to sever, has bidden Mr. Lang reconstruct his Cabinet and sacrifice, among others, Mr. T. D. Mutch, Minister of Public Instruction, and Mr. J. J. Fitzgerald, Minister of Local Government, both old and tried administrators in this and other Labour Governments, and men who have quietened down from the fiery advocacy of revolutionary methods to a quiet sanity in polities. It seems as though the A.L.P. is in the hands of hotbloods for "whose purpose the moderates of experience are insufficient. An early election is now said to be certain, and it will be for the people of New South Wales to say whether they approve of the willy-nilly methods of the A.L.P. or -frill bring it to a more moderate frame of mind by the check of an adverse Labour vote.