PARTY MERGER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 November 1943, Page 3

PARTY MERGER

NEGOTIATIONS COLLAPSE IN NEW SOUTH WALES UNITED AUSTRALIAN PARTY BLAMED. VESTED INTERESTS & CONTROL. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, November 25. The negotiations for the formation in New South Wales of a new Liberal Democratic Party have collapsed. It had been intended that the new party should become a Commonwealth-wide coalition of all non-Labour political interests. As a beginning, the new party, representing a merger of the United Australia, Liberal Democratic and Commonwealth parties, intended to contest next year’s New South Wales State elections. New South Wales at present has a Labour Government. Supporters of the original Liberal Democrats walked out from the conference after a heated debate on a demand by the United Australian Party that its paid party staff be temporarily retained. The United Australia and Commonwealth Party delegates have agreed to merge and form a new organisation to be called the Democratic Party. The Liberal Democrats will continue as a separate organisation. Most, political commentators blame the United Australia Party, which provides the bulk of the Opposition in New South Viales as well as in the Federal Parliament, for the failure of the negotiations. “No student of the malaise which has afflicted the U.A.P. will feel any surprise at this collapse,” says the “Sydney Morning Herald” in an editorial. “Obviously, if a genuinely new start was to be made, the question of control of the new party’s organisation involved the relinquishment of certain vested interests. The delegates of the Liberal Democratic Party could hardly be expected to accept a plan which would virtually have installed the discredited U.A.P. machine as the organising medium for the new party. The breakdown of the conference is disappointing to all who hoped it would lead to the birth of a muchneeded virile and progressive political movement. It confirms the belief that the building of a new party must begin from the ground up and not from the top down.” / ___