The Crisis of Australian Labor

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

B Y the time these words are read, Australia will have had a national JL3 election. conflict within the Australian Labor Party has been a dominant factor in the electoral campaign and will affect the result. What is the background of this Party crisis? What is the clash of ideas, particularly in the field of international affairs, which gives it interest and importance far beyond the limits of Australia? Since the defeat of the Chifley Labor Government in I949, Labor has been in opposition in the Commonwealth Parliament, although it continued to hold office in five of the six states--Queensland, New South Wales, Tasmania, West Australia and (until recently) Victoria. leadership of Dr. Herbert Vere Evatt, who succeeded the late J. B. Chifley in 1951, has been frequently challenged, mainly because he opposed efforts to proscribe the Communist Party, but partly because he exercised his personal rights as a lawyer to assist Communists legally. Dr. Evatt retaliated by accusing his opponents within the Labor Party of being under the control of The Movement, a political expression of Catholic Action. Charges and countercharges followed; sectarian feelings poisoned the political atmosphere. When Dr. Evatt's opponents in Victoria formed a separate executive, they were expelled from the Labor Party; an anti-Evatt breakaway party voted against the State Labor Gov ernment and in the ensuing election Labor was defeated. In the Common wealth Parliament, a small group of Victorian members followed suit by leav ing the official Labor Party. division within the Labor Party has extended less openly, but just as seriously, throughout Australia. In every State there are those who believe that the official Party is temporizing with Communists in the trade unions, or is following a wrong policy in international affairs. There are, however, issues other than international policy involved in the conflict, and these may be isolated first. There are the differences about the part that Roman Catholics have played or should play in Party councils; about the Party's stated objective of socialization-its meaning, its im portance as a guide in planning legislation, its finality; about the relationship between Communism and Labor; the extent to which theoretical differences should involve the Labor Party in fighting Communism in the trade unions; about the inevitable personal strains and factionalism in a large and well established political party; and about the disappointments at Labor's failure to defeat the Commonwealth Liberal-Country Party alliance led by Prime Minister R. G. Menzies. These issues are interwoven with the central con troversy over international policy. As Attorney-General and Minister for External Affairs in the Curtin and Chifley Labor Governments, Dr. Evatt won a great reputation in the two fields of law and international affairs. This reputation has passed over party lines. In the international sphere he has enjoyed as wide esteem as any Aus tralian, including Prime Minister W. M. Hughes in World War I and Prime Minister Curtin in World War II. His present difficulties, like the differences within the Labor Party, have developed not because there is any important