Curtin and Poll

This week 4,500,000 Australians go to the polls for an election like that which the U.S. looks forward to in 1944: to pick a leader to hold office for a period (three years) that most Australians believe will take them out of war and into the peace. Australians are looking for politicians who show them the straightest path to victory.

Already thousands of votes have been recorded--votes marked on handmade ballots yellowed with tropic humidity and desert grime: soldiers have been voting since nominations closed June 30. Out of Australia's 7,000,000 population, 820,000 men and 40,000 women are in the services.

On the Home Front, maximum war effort is the fundamental purpose of the people (more than 500,000 work in war factories), but within that basic purpose the contesting parties looked hard for issues. Since campaigning began they have adopted and dropped issues so fast that voters themselves had to narrow down the main issues to four:

> The Labor Party's refusal, whether in opposition or in power, to endorse a National All-Party Government.

> The law which prevents draftees from being sent to fight overseas, except within the limits of MacArthur's Southwest Pacific command.

> Strikes, particularly in the coal fields-fewer than for many years but continuing to impede all-out production.

> National leadership, based on the normally divergent aims of labor and capital.

Some Independents and candidates of tiny parties may cut in on the results. Of the 346 candidates for the 75 seats in the House of Representatives, 100 are Independents. Although there are no women members of Australia's Federal Parliament, many women think this is the year to cut in. Independents, small partyites, crackpots and women probably will have little effect on the big fight. That lies between the Labor Party Government of "Honest John" Curtin and the combined forces of Arthur Fadden's United Country (Farmers) Party and William Morris Hughes's United Australia (Conservative) Party.

Each leader has been a wartime Prime Minister. Fadden had less than two months of the job before Curtin took it; Hughes was Prime Minister in the last war.

Ultimate Decision in the election lies with Australia's bewildered, war-harassed, tax-burdened "little man." Despite tremendous price-fixing moves, he has seen the retail-price index rise 13.8% since Japan entered the war, on top of an 11% increase during the first 27 months of war.

He has seen living costs bursting through existing controls and he is suspicious that the new subsidies for tea, potato growing, clothing, textiles and dairying will not solve the country's insistent economic problem.

Australia's economy is out of joint, the barrel of Australia's limited manpower has been scraped to the bottom, every town and city is suffering from overcrowding, food shortages, lack of personnel in ordinary services. Domestic servants are as scarce as the platypus. It is a prospector's job to buy a package of cigarets or a glass of beer. The people's clothes are getting shabby. It is hard to buy simple things like matches and writing paper, impossible to buy golf or tennis balls, almost impossible to buy a razor blade.

The Australian lines up for an hour or more to get a haircut, another hour for a crude "austerity" meal at a restaurant (all meals limited to three courses, costs limited to 45-c- for breakfast, 55-c- for lunch, 72-c- for dinner). It takes six weeks to get shoes soled, five months to get a watch repaired. If an Australian is lucky, he gets four gallons of gasoline a month. Horse racing and all sports have been curtailed, and the gambling he loves is limited to patriotic lotteries and raffles for such luxuries as hams, sides of bacon, boxes of candy, sometimes a bottle of Scotch.

Australians are living according to Curtin's standards of "austerity." Curtin has told them: "If I have to decide whether I'll be short of fighting men or short of tucker (food), I'm going to be short of tucker." Costs of living are cheap by American standards, but no longer cheap in a country where $14 a week is a good wage for a good stenographer and a man in the higher-income brackets may earn $50 a week. Money, for that matter, does not mean very much; there is so little Australians can buy: eight ounces of butter and two ounces of tea a week, no canned food. Milkmen and bakers are restricted to zones. Grocers and butchers make no deliveries. There are not enough houses, apartments or even hotel rooms.

War is very real to the "little man" in Australia. Australian casualties the world over have been heavy. The draft and voluntary enlistment have drained the land of its young men. On a population basis, Australia has put into uniform an army equivalent to a U.S. army of 15,500,000 men. The little man wants the fight to end, abundant peace to come.

Politics. To critics of the draft law which prevents draftees from being sent to fight outside the Southwest Pacific area, Prime Minister Curtin replies with figures. When he came to power less than two years ago, there were 267,000 Australians who had volunteered to fight anywhere in the world. Today there are 530,000 volunteers for the United Nations' battlefronts-70% of Australia's total enlistment in all services.

To Conservatives who chorus for a National All-Party Government, Curtin replies: "National Government is the catchcry of Australian Tory failure."

Behind Curtin are the country's mighty, watchful trade unions, as anxious about the peace as they are about the war. Conservative charges that Curtin has mollycoddled coal strikers and is using the war to advance socialism have met with a lukewarm reception. Curtin has done much to increase the war effort. On his record, Curtin's Labor Party wants to improve its majority in the House of Representatives, a majority previously dependent on the votes of two Independents. It also wants to win at least 16 of 19 vacant seats and obtain a majority in the Senate.

Latest public-opinion polls indicated that 78% of Australia's people were satisfied with Curtin and his Labor Government. Unless a surprising number of Independents are voted in, Curtin and Labor should win.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.