The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1929 A BITTER FIGHT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 772, 19 September 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1929 A BITTER FIGHT

A VERITABLE political Messiah”: Such is the title bestowed satirically on the Rt. Hon. Stanley Melbourne Bruce, Prime Minister of Australia, by the Rt. Hon. William Morris Hughes, the Commonwealth’s wartime idol who subsequently revealed feet of clay. Perhaps it is as good a distinction as any for annoying a political enemy, but it easily could be used, if Mr. Bruce were not a model of politeness, as a reason for bestowing a terrible title on the so-called political Messiah’s worst disciple. So, in playing with satire, which is the little Welshman’s chief weapon in verbal battle, Mr. Hughes is also playing with fire. It was not Mr. Bruce who betrayed the Federal Government into a snap defeat in Parliament, and sharp warfare in the Commonwealth electorate. The emergency election battle throughout Australia is on. It was opened briskly, but apparently not brilliantly, last evening on two fronts far apart: by Mr. Bruce at Dandenong, near Melbourne, and by Mr. Hughes at Chatswood, the centre of his North Sydney electorate. Neither “moved the stars along” with the power of appeal or by the pith of politics. Each showed more temper than the genius of statesmanship. Both concentrated on the fate of Federal industrial arbitration, the Prime Minister asserting and appealing that this controversial question was the only issue at stake, Mr. Hughes claiming that the threat to abolish the Arbitration Court was a sinister policy, representing an attempt to reduce wages and so place the workers in the position of having to accept the employers’ terms or starve. Whichever side observers may take or favour in the raucous warfare, those at a distar ce, relying on crude and unequal summaries of the rival orations, can hardly fail to concede that Mr. Hughes appeared as the shrewder combatant. After ridiculing his former friend the Prime Minister with characteristic political venom, the able manoeuvrer for a restoration to dictatorial power trimmed the sails of his craft, or rather crafty argument, to catch the Labour wind of favour as well as any Nationalist breeze that might blow his way for “auld acquaintance’ sake.” Such tactics were to he anticipated. “Billy” Hughes never angles with a single hook. He prefers the use of many barbs and a variety of tempting bait. It is impossible at the moment to say definitely what the veteran campaigner really seeks. Even his most intimate friends never have known the exact course of his pursuit of power and still more power, though they always know quite well that he himself knows and is in no sense muddle-headed in strategy and tactics. It has been made clear enough that the Nationalists have drummed him and other rebels out of their party camp, but then he and an insurgent comrade coolly have submitted their candidature to the Nationalists’ genereal election headquarters staff for approval! Perhaps Mr. Hughes is confident that the Nationalists will depose their present leader and return to their former chief as an abler tactician. The rebel’s record as a statesman shows clearly enough that, with all his faults and a somewhat unlovable character' (though Mr. Hughes, when he likes, can be the most charming of men), he has no rival in Australian polities for hard and compaet efficiency as an administrator. Hitherto, there have been three different parties in the Federal House of Representatives—Nationalists, Country Party, and Labour. It has been said fairly that the Nationalist Party is the heir of all the parties which have fought Labour or Socialism in the past. It has been the refuge of Conservatives, Liberals and Radicals. For the past six years, the purely sectional party of country representatives has maintained the Government in power by virtue of a friendly alliance with the Nationalists, hut always without a fusion of parties. Each discusses party interests apart from the other, while the Country Party’s allegiance openly has been based on “cupboard love” solely in the interests of farmers. The Labour Party, a competent team of debaters and political thinkers, has been shackled in service by the influence and demands of industrial unionism. Now, a fourth party has entered the Federal arena—the People’s Party. It may have a policy and some useful purpose, but these, so far, are secrets. As things are in the fierce campaign, Mr. Hughes, who is being opposed in North Sydney by an “official Nationalist candidate,” Dr. L. W. Nott, is in the centre of the battlefield, eager to slay, not afraid of being slain.

FARMERS AND POLITICS

FE discussion by the Wairarapa Farmers’ Union of Mr. W. J. Poison’s place in the political scheme exposes a weakness common to all such organisations. It is curious that, while Mr. Poison was congratulated by many district unions on his election for the Stratford constituency, the tendency now seems to he to criticise his position. This criticism undoubtedly arises from the fact that, though elected as an Independent, Mr. Poison has done nothing so far to dissociate himself from a Government that is conspicuously not a farmers’ Government. Had Mr. Poison maintained an aloof attitude toward the Budget proposals embracing rural taxation, fewer shafts would have been directed against him. The result of the discussion at Masterton was the formulation of a remit providing for the automatic retirement of any Dominion president entering Parliament. Other branches of the union will no doubt be invited to endorse this remit before it is presented to the annual conference of the union, and some lively discussion of a very debatable point is therefore assured. But when the remit reaches the conference it will have small chance of survival. The time might come when a farmers’ Government was in power. The Farmers’ Union would then he reluctant to forswear the chance of having its chief executive represented amid the governing councils of the nation! At the present time the difficulty. arises from the somewhat diffused purposes for which the union stands. Nominally a non-political body, it yet follows every political manoeuvre with the most vital interest, and is not slow to protest against any political expedient which threatens rural interests. Yet here, again, it becomes sadly evident that farmers, though nominally united in a common purpose, yet harbour every shade of political opinion in their breasts. So wide is the franchise under which election to the Farmers’ Union is possible, that its elements must necessarily entertain opinions sometimes as wide apart as the poles. Were a certain body of farmers to formulate a definite political and social policy, and exclude from their_ organisation any who did not subscribe to that policy, the position would be clarified. Instead of that farmers are here represented hv Reformers, somewhere else by Liberals, and even by Mr. W. Lee Martin, a Labour man, who has been prominently associated with the affairs of the Farmers’ Union in his district. If Mr. Poison is to be deprived of his office because he has become a practical instead of a theoretical politician, why should not Mr. Lee Martin suffer a similar penalty? To subject the chief pillar of farmers’ unionism to a rule not applied to the rank and file seems a palpable injustice.