PARTY POLITICS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 April 1943, Page 3

PARTY POLITICS

IN FEDERAL PARLIAMENT MR CURTIN’S CHALLENGE DEADLOCK OVER PREFERENCE TO SERVICE MEN. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) CANBERRA, April 1. The deadlock continues in the Federal Parliament ovei' preference to returned service men. The Prime Minister, Mr Curtin, has again challenged Parliament to co-operate with his Government or else find another Government. The deadlock has risen from an amendment to the Repatriation Bill which was carried., by the Senate Opposition. The amendment grants preference in Public Service appointments to fighting service personnel who have been in combat areas. It also requires Government contractors, to grant similar preference. After a four-day recess, Mr Curtin announced that the Government was prepared to accept the Senate amendment, but wanted merchant seamen and civil aviation pilots who had served in combat areas included. Thus altered, the amendment was carried in the House of Representatives by 29 votes to 28, but Opposition senators are understood to have decided to reject the Government addendum. Mr Curtin said the Opposition amendment was part tf the general Opposition policy which sought immediately to destroy the Government, and he added: “I knew the time would come when, in all probability, the Government would no longer be able to carry on in a Parliament of this description. (The Government holds a majority in the House of Representatives only by the support of Independents, while the Opposition has a majority in the Senate.) “I neither fear that day nor will I do anything to hasten or delay it.” Mr Curtin accused the Senate Opposition of “flag waving” tactics, and said there could be no- effective preference for soldiers except by a comprehensive Bill such as the Government had proposed. While one Opposition member challenged Mr Curtin to resign, another declared that he himself would resign from the party if the Senate Opposition rejected the Government’s extension of its amendment. “I am not going to the people on the issue put forward by the Senate,” he said. “The country comes before party. Members on both sides of the House are playing party politics.”