Change for -L-1

Australia found itself bursting with spring blossoms and a Labor Government last week. The Labor Government, the Commonwealth's first in ten years, got in through a squabble over -L-1.

Labor had introduced a motion to cut the Administration budget by -L-1. Two Independents, Arthur W. Coles and Alexander Wilson, turned against the coalition Government they had helped to keep in power, and during a ten-hour debate Prime Minister Arthur W. Fadden and Independent Arthur W. Coles shouted insults at each other across the House. Arthur W. Fadden accused Arthur W. Coles of knifing the Government because Prime Minister Fadden had not invited him into the Cabinet. Independents Coles and Wilson stuck to their guns. When the votes were counted the Government had lost by 36 votes to 33. Prime Minister Fadden resigned and Governor-General Lord Gowrie called on Labor Leader John Curtin to form a Cabinet.

Not merely for -L-1 did Australia's uneasy conservative coalition lose power. A. W. Coles, whose vote helped to defeat it, is one of Australia's leading capitalists. Director of a string of "half-crown" stores, he is sometimes called Australia's Woolworth. He has been sharply criticized by Labor and the trade unions many times. But both he and Independent Wilson agree with Labor that the war should be financed with Commonwealth bank credits instead of through the higher-interest-bearing plan proposed by onetime Accountant Fadden (TIME, Sept. 8).

New Prime Minister Curtin hastened to assure "the whole world, and particularly our enemies, that whatever takes place in this Parliament does not in any way affect the complete unity of the Australian people in their determination to prosecute the war to a victorious conclusion."

These were fine sentiments, but the Labor Government will not live or die by them. It will live or die by its internal policy. It has persistently fought against such Government measures as deferring more of the soldiers pay, levies against small incomes, gasoline rationing. It has advocated some control of monopolies. Prime Minister Curtin, 56-year-old ex-timber worker, has been leader of the Opposition for six years, has never held ministerial office.

One thing is almost certain to come out of the new Labor Government: a demand by Australia for the Anzac military forces to have a separate command, to serve, not as a unit of the British Army, but as an ally.

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