LABOUR TACTICS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 July 1943, Page 2

LABOUR TACTICS

IN FEDERAL ELECTION SOME OPPOSITION DISCORD. MESSRS FADDEN & MENZIES AT ODDS (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, July 25. Labour’s record as a war time Government will be the keynote of the broadcast policy speech on Monday night by the Prime Minister, Mr Curtin. He is also expected to make further promises to enforce laws against strikes, but is likely to keep election issues off domestic problems, which are regarded as Labour’s most vulnerable point. Because of the tradition that the Prime Minister’s policy speech attacks not personalities but the Opposition policy, Mr Curtin is not expected to mention the discord now existing between Mr Fadden and the former Prime Minister, Mr Menzies. Mr Fadden’s scheme of post-war credits by refunding one-third of the net income tax collected in the war years after July, 1942, has been publicly criticised by Mr Menzies, who said: ‘I don’t believe Mr Fadden’s scheme can be introduced without inflation. We need every shilling that can be obtained from the Australian people to win the war.” The possible cost of the scheme has been put as high as £200,000,000. Mr Fadden has now replied to Mr Menzies’ criticism, saying: "This stab in the back at this juncture makes another betrayal in a series for which Mr Menzies has become notorious.” Mi’ Menzies recently headed a breakaway movement of 17 Opposition members, but the breach was declared healed before the opening of the present election campaign. With pooling less than four weeks away, political commentators are now assessing “possibles and probables” without being able to convince themselves that either the Government or the Opposition will emerge with a clear working majority. In all his speeches so far Mr Fadden has a National Government the first plank of the Opposition platform. His pledge for an all-party administration everywhere has been cordially received. Political commentators, however, expect Labour to employ the FaddenMenzies disagreement as evidence of the impractical nature of the proposal.