The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1929 LABOUR IN THE SADDLE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 793, 14 October 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1929 LABOUR IN THE SADDLE

LABOUR politically lias captured the Commonwealth of Australia. The emergency national poll on Saturday for the election of a new Federal House of Representatives has routed the anti-Socialist Ministerial Party and given Labour the right to form the next Government with a relatively safe workingmajority. Whether enjoyed or loathed, the result indisputably is a great triumph for Labour. Enumeration of all the preferential votes for more than two rival parties’ candidates has not yet been finalised, but the count already lifts Labour into the saddle. Some people may look upon this result as another case of putting a beggar on horseback, but time alone will prove whether the party will ride the leading Federal horse to the devil. There can be no argument about the fact that the piebald Government has received a violent knock-out blow. Four of its Ministers have fallen, and even the Prime Minister is fighting, as it were, on his knees. The final distribution of preference votes given to a Liberal candidate is considered practically certain to enable the Rt. Hon. S. M. Bruce to squeeze into the new House, but there will be little pleasure for liimself in the bruising result. A loss of about ten thousand votes in an electorate which formerly loved him like a favourite brother is enough to put any statesman’s nose out of joint. Indeed, it looks as though Mr. Bruce’s amiable, but quite useful, career as a national administrator is over and done with for some time to come. Before looking deeper into the troubled sea of Federal politics, it is worth while to give special attention to the Nationalist mutineers, who scuttled a stately* ship. Four out of half a dozen of those rebels and waverers have not only been saved from drowning, but th@ir leader, Mr. William Morris Hughes, has been treated like a hero. Though one of the best Nationalist campaigners was put up to fell the wild man from Wales, Mr. Hughes beat Dr. Nott and another challenger by twelve thousand votes! This notable result will please the vanity of the man, but in reality his victory will be as dust and ashes in the mouth. As many people will see it, the bold buccaneer, in scuttling one craft, merely launched another, flying the flag of Labour, and so well manned for its trial voyage that there is no room in it for the ablest “political pirate.” As for the final alignment of the rival parties, that may he left to the busy enumerators. Enough has been disclosed in the first progress count of the poll to demonstrate conclusively that Labour, after crying like pelicans in the wilderness for fourteen years almost to a week, has been returned to power. Already, Australian prophets have predicted an early crisis for the prospective Labour Government because of the fact that its representation in the Federal Senate is so meagre as to he helpless. It has only seven Senators, as against 23 Nationalists and six Country Party members. It is not necessary to place too much reliance on the prophecies of anti-Labour seers. If their predictions for the future are to be no,more reliable than those they made in the immediate past, the prophets need not he given any more honour in this country than they have received in their own. Apart from the complete failure of conjecture, the Senate has a plain duty' to perform. It cannot remain blind to the decisive will of the people in respect of their representation in the House of Representatives. The writing is on the wall for conservative Senators who may he tempted to ignore wisdom and flout the Labour Government. The Senate’s clear responsibility is to serve discreetly in exercising restraint upon the new Socialistic Government. It is beyond dispute that the position of Australia’s finance is unsound and ominous, calling for economy, retrenchment and extremely cautious enterprise, hut in spite of these truths it would be foolish to suggest, rather than assert, that the Labour Party will plunge the Commonwealth into red or even black ruin. Labour represents Socialism to a marked degree in Australia, but its policy, as it is everywhere else, is opportunist. Socialism w*U be discarded or diluted if either stand in the way of working-class rule. Today, in Great Britain, some of the men who were hooted as potential political highwaymen a few years ago, are hailed as prudent statesmen and the honestest of men. In the meantime the Labour Flag is aloft in Australia.