[Editor: This editorial, regarding 1) the proposed extension of wartime regulations, and 2) the White Australia Policy, was published in The Australian Worker (Sydney, NSW), 15 March 1944.]
Editorial.
Another aspect of control
It must have come as a veritable kick in the pants to the gang of post-war planners who have assured the rationed and restricted community that present conditions will be continued many years after the war, to find, on the authority of the Minister for War Organisation of Industry, that restrictive regulations needed during the war would be removed as soon as possible after peace was restored.
Mr. Dedman was speaking in the House of Representatives on the Constitution Alteration Bill, and he said it was a ridiculous idea to suggest that the conferring of reconstruction powers on the Commonwealth would mean a continuation, or even an intensification, of restrictions and regimentation after the war.
The post-war period, he said, would not be a period of restriction and restraint. It would be a period of development and expansion.
It is good to have the assurances of practical Labor men like Dedman, Chifley and others charged with the War Organisation of Industry and Post-War Reconstruction, and to hear them speak hopefully of the future from the standpoint of the People, the majority of whom, to say the least of it, are very much perturbed by the economic anticipations and prognostications of the “professors” and other alleged experts associated with some of the Government departments.
Too often do we find these garrulous individuals, the most voluble and omniscient of whom appear to be associated with the Department of Post-War Reconstruction, shaking an admonitory finger at those who still have the temerity to expect that their personal liberties and working-class standards will be restored after the war, and to think that the hopes of their industrial and political pioneers for a happier and better world will soon be realised.
Mr. Dedman, in his statement to the Members of the House of Representatives last week, gave a flat denial to the suggestions that the Government desired an extension of constitutional powers so that the war-time regulations and restrictions could be continued when peace was restored, and when the minions of the anti-Labor propaganda sheets directed his attention to the bureaucratic political scientists and research officers’ pronouncements he was still emphatic that his interpretation of the Federal Government’s policy was the correct one.
The disposition of voluble bureaucrats and research officers to seize inappropriate occasions to make more or less authoritative pronouncements on important points of Government policy is one that is causing no little concern in Labor circles.
A couple of months ago the newly appointed “Senior Research Officer” of the Department of Post-War Reconstruction told the “World Fellowship” at a Y.M.C.A. luncheon in Sydney that if Australia believed in a new world it must be prepared to throw into the melting pot all its ideals, its policies and its tariffs.
And last week, in the proletarian atmosphere of the Hotel Australia, under the distinguished presidency of Sir Benjamin Fuller, Sir Herbert Gepp and others, he took the spotlight at a gathering of the “Australian United Nations Assembly” in a discussion of the value of Underground Movements in the fight for Freedom.
A meeting of Labor women at the week-end unanimously expressed its alarm at the appointment of such men as Dr. Ross “to determine the future of our Australian people,” and urged that the Federal Government should give an outspoken and emphatic assurance “that there will not be any policy for Post-War Reconstruction that will in any way interfere with our White Australia Policy.”
As everyone knows, the policy of White Australia is now, perhaps, the most outstanding political characteristic of this country, and it has been accepted, not only by those closely associated with it, but also by those who have watched and studied “this interesting experiment” from afar.
Only those who favor the exploitation of a servile colored race for greed of gain, and a few professional economists and benighted theologians, are now heard in serious criticism of a White Australia; but, like the enemies of Labor who are striving to confuse the minds of the people on the intentions of the Government on the Constitution Alteration Bill, they are encouraged by the ill-timed and inappropriate pronouncements of what are, after all, irresponsible officials.
It is high time that these officials in their public utterances and pronouncements were themselves subject to some “control,” otherwise the People will find it increasingly difficult to distinguish the spurious from the genuine in many of these important matters.
J.S.H.
Source:
The Australian Worker (Sydney, NSW), 15 March 1944, p. 1
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