AUSTRALIA
The Commonwealth was saved from financial shipwrecklast week when the $140,000,000 conversion loan; needed to straighten out tangledfinances (TIME, Sept. 17, et ante), was oversubscribed by $8,750,000 by 117,000subscribers. The treasury proudly announced that 103,000 subscribers had sent $95,000,000 in cash or checks. Said J. E. Fenton, Acting Prime Minister in the absence of James Henry Scullin (on his way back from the Imperial Conference at London): “I am very hopeful that if we continue to pull together we will soon find come out of the black cloud of depression and enjoy the sunlight of prosperity.”
Important as the success of the loan was for the whole Australian Commonwealth, New South Welshmen were more excited over the unsuccessful attempt of N. S. W. Premier J. T. Lang last week to appoint 60 of his Laborite friends to the State Legislative Council (Upper House).
As a Laborite, Premier Lang has found every Socialist bill he has tried to pass blocked by the Legislative Council. In New South Wales, an exception to other Australian States, the members of the Upper House are not elected by the voters but appointed by the Governor at the suggestion of the Premier. Premier Lang announced that, just as the late great Herber Asquith pushed his Parliament Bill (curtailing the veto power of the Lords over money bills) through the British House of Lords by threatening to create enough new Liberal Peers to override Conservative opposition, he (Mr. Lang) would appoint enough new Councilors not only to guarantee passage of his laws but, worse, to pass a special law abolishing the council itself without a popular referendum. Final threat to horrify Conservative New South Welshmen, Premier Lang announced that the new Councilors would be 60 of his “women friends.” Political opponents, defenders of the Legislative Council, rushed to the courts with demands for a permanent injunction.
They got it last week. Chief Justice Street, of the High Court of New South Wales, to which Premier Lang plans an appeal, held “that the Consitution of New South Wales requires a specified manner and form for the passage of legislation abolishing the Council, which form in our opinion is a referendum.” Observers doubted whether, now that abolition of the Upper House is impossible without a referendum, Premier Lang’s 60 lady friends will ever become Councilors.
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