The Daily News. MONDAY, MAY 1, 1911.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 289, 1 May 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, MAY 1, 1911.

LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY. Australia lias given Its answer to the Labor Caucus of the Commonwealth Government, which, in the name of liberty, equality and fraternity, is trying hard to kill all three. We lately endeavored to explain what might be expected to result if the people of the Commonwealth should be so hopelessly insane as to say "Yea" to the complicated questions on which a referendum was to be taken. As far as one may judge from expressions of opinion cabled from Australia, aggressive Laborite who desires that the liberties of the people should be absolutely in the hands of a few men, arc merely angry with the people. The Labor Government of the Commonwealth, recognising that the referendum was apparently the most democratic method of obtaining the true feelings of the majority on great questions, used it. The vote was small, as might have been expected in a country where the difficulties of undertaking a poll are greater than in any other country on earth, owing to the enormous extent of territory, the scattered nature of settlement, and the fact that the Australian cannot always be torn away from his work to answer foolish questions. As a magnificent sample of arrogance, the questions put at the referendum are unique. The assumption that every State in the Commonwealth would vote its own powers away, placing them in the hands of a small group of persons whose appetite for domination grows amazingly, needed a national check. It has renewed the necessary check, but apparently is not discouraged . Mr. Holman counsels taking steps to give the Federal Government —that is ,the Labor Caucus—the powers that the referendum has failed to award. That is to say, should the Caucus decide to pass legislation conferring on itself the necessary powers, the referendum will be proved worthless, and the enormous expense to which the country has been put futile. It is apparent that the Caucus, which is so anxious to quell monopoly, desires more than anything to become the most evil of all monopolies. "We gave the people," says the Caucus, "an opportunity of being absolutely dominated by us. They refused to be dominated. We shall try to force them." The next phase of the battle between Caucus and people will be interesting as showing whether the Caucus shall rule despite the people's mandate or whether the people will wipe out the Commonwealth Labor Government. There ia, of course, a limit beyond which even the most violent advocate of Labor tyranny will refuse to be driven.

It lias been claimed that the results might have been different if the full body of citizens entitleS to vote had gone to the polls and had recorded their answers to the questions. In copying Switzerland, the Commonwealth Government overlooked the most important of the Swiss methods for ensuring a full vote. A Government that aches to employ exceedingly drastic methods of control might have adopted the system of voting by post, exacting a penalty for neglect to return the papers, duly answered, within' a specified time. It is impossible to believe that even had the whole of the available voters in the Commonwealth recorded their answers, the result could have been any different. Australia will not, one feels, ever consent to a system of Government that is in real fact a Dictatorship. The Commonwealth ActingPrime. Minister has threatened that should the people reject the proposals that have been put to them, the Government will try again. As the Caucus is in the habit of insisting, it might make it a penal offence for a voter to fail in answering the questions of the referenda. The only fact Australia really has to concern itself with is that a majority of the Labor Party in the Commonwealth control Federal politics, and are determined, despite the people, to control every phase of commerce -and all the people of a vast country. If the people on being approached again and • again at last consent tq be ruled by the iron hand of thirty-three men—a majority of the party—they 'are the most peculiarly spineless people who ever broke bread. The present position, therefore, is that the majority of Labor members who at present privately fix the legiStation of the Commonwealth, will fight against the people, and not for them. They intend to force their nostrums down the throats of the folk who pay them. The position compels the conclusion that the people will not pay them long. Divisions of Labor in the Federal Parliament are beginning to chafe at a machine which permits no disloyalty to the central idea of absolute and complete domination by a Caucus. There may be glimmerings of awakening conscience among the steel-shod legislators, who are helping to tread liberty underfoot; and with the aid of rebellious confreres, the people of Australia may refuse to permit fewer than forty men to dictate their life's routine. The questions put at s that referendum were appallingly complicated The majority of the people of the Commonwealth are not used to giving judicial opinions. Anyone who has witnessed the agonies of a minority of voters asked to decide for themselves a simplyput issue can understand why tens of thousands of Australian settlers stayed at home and chopped wood or milked cows, instead of making a special effort; to reach a place where they could have an opportunity of making Australia in- ( finitely more painful to live in than Russia.