Tax Snatching

Wriggling their bare toes in Australia's good earth, the sturdy offspring (he has nine) of Australian Premier Joseph Aloysius Lyons romped and whooped in his garden last week heedless of the fact that their father was perhaps pushing rebellious New South Wales to the brink of insurrection.

This rebel state, dominated by a Labor Party which recently voted sympathy with Eamon de Valera's fight for Irish freedom (TIME, April 11), has repudiated so many debts (promptly made good by the Commonwealth Treasury) that a bill to seize tax revenues of New South Wales was recently passed by the Dominion Parliament and upheld by the Australian High Court last week. Thus clothed with supreme authority, Premier Lyons promptly made proclamation to the citizens of New South Wales, ordered them to pay income taxes into his Federal Treasury and not into the State Treasury of their own defiant State Pcemier John Thomas Lang.

To hurl such a proclamation at high-spirited New South Welshmen was risky. "But surely every step must be taken!" cried Premier Lyons' wealthy Cabinet colleague Stanley Melbourne Bruce. "Surely everything possible must be done to check this man [Premier Lang] who is a menace to Australia in his mad career!"

Next day Premier Lang padlocked his State's tax offices in Sydney, slipped the keys into his pocket, slapped the pocket, defied the Commonwealth Government to collect taxes in New South Wales.

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