NSW Labor

On the 17^th June the people of New South Wales will go to the polls to exercise the greatest of their sovereign rights—the right to choose their Government. On that day they will pronounce upon Labor’s record and Labor’s future policy, and it is my profound obligation and privilege, as Leader of the Labor Party, to account to you for the trust that you have placed in the Labor Party three years ago, and to place before you, and seek your approval to our programme for the next three years.

I present to you four reasons why you should again give us a mandate to govern this State—four reasons that expose the pretensions of anti-Labor to replace this Government.

The first reason is that Labor is the only party which can govern in its own right. The alternative is a party of changing names—the old Nationalists, the U.A.P., the Liberals, and the Liberals in coalition with the Country Party. These changing names are symbols of uncertain policies, and of internal party confusion. The only alternative to these unstable political parties, whose leaders have only proved failures as administrators in the past, is a Labor Party which has not altered its basic idealism since it was formed in 1891.

The second is that Labor is a party which draws its support from all parts of the State: its roots are deep in the soil, its strength is in the factory and the workshop, its ideals are in the homes of our people. It governs, therefore, in the interests of the State as a whole.

Thirdly, Labor is the only party which has a policy for the betterment of the people. Anti-Labor has been converted against its will to the need for social development; its proposals arise not from an honest and constant belief in the need for human welfare, but because it is hungry for office.

Fourthly, Labor has the courage, the ability and the positive and progressive outlook necessary to conceive and carry out schemes for national development which require Government backing and Government finance for their fulfilment.

In placing before you these basic reasons why you should return the Labor Government to office, and in placing before you our policy as I will outline it to-night for you to approve or reject, I am deeply conscious, as indeed you are, of the fact that at election time we see most clearly our democracy at work. The essence of democracy is the right to choose and to change its governments. The essence of communism, or any form of totalitarian government, is that those rights are set aside. The reins of Government are forcibly seized by non-elected rulers. There is no choice of government. And there is no power within the people to rid themselves of the ruling forces because no power is permitted to exist or to grow amongst the people. The Communist Party is an atheistic party, a revolutionary party, a party whose principles are diametrically opposed to those of democratic government.

The Labor Party is a Party passionately pledged to the principle of the sovereignty of the people and of constitutional government and we will pass legislation to amend the Constitution to provide that the life of Parliament cannot exceed a period of three years without a referendum of the people. Labor is implacably opposed to communism and the destruction of communism is not an issue amongst the democratic parties at this election. Action along certain lines is being taken by the Commonwealth Government under the defence power, which is a Commonwealth and not a State jurisdiction. Bus we intend to continue our policy of fighting communist influences with all the strength of organised Labor, and with a determination to continue our policy of removing the social ills which are the breeding ground of communism.

In this I emphasise the major differences in the approach to social problems between Labor and our opponents at this election.

First, our policy is full employment. Their policy is partial employment. To anti-Labor, employment must be hedged round with threats of dismissal, and limited by fears of insecurity. Their policy is dominated by the belief that industrial discipline requires a chronic fear of unemployment.

To Labor full employment means the right to work, the right to choose a job from a number of alternatives, recognition of the dignity which can be retained by the employee only if a fear of insecurity is removed.

In the second place, our policy is to improve working conditions by shortening hours, and to advance living standards by higher wages and expanding social services. The Liberal’s attitude is to place on shorter hours the responsibility for shortages. Their attitude to higher wages is not openly to advocate lower wages and social services, but to give every reason why these should be reduced. What they dare not openly attack, they indirectly belittle. Yet full employment and high wages mean prosperity not only to the wage and salary earner, but also to the small businessman and shopkeeper, who must rely on a steady demand for their goods; not only to the housewife, but also to the farmer, who can sell his output at profitable prices.

Anti-Labor regards men and women as factors in the cost of production, as figures in a set of Statistics. Labor recognises that the only purpose of production is the improvement in human standards of living.

Thirdly, our policy is to facilitate savings so that the people may have some margin for their current needs. Our reactionary opponents see savings in the mass, merely as a potential element in inflation, and as a counter to their policy of industrial discipline and the return to the fear of unemployment. The people’s record savings deposits of to-day, we hold to be an extra safeguard to the individual as a security from want.

And the fourth basic difference between Labor and the other Parties is that our policy is to reduce shortages by increasing production. There are two methods of overcoming shortages—Labor’s way of increasing production; and anti-Labor’s way of reducing standards. Given a reduction of standards, the stocks would pile up in our shops. Given ten percent unemployment, there would be empty houses again. The contrast is between the shortages that come through expanding standards, and the shortage of money which produces a surplus of goods. There are gloomy-faced people who go around exaggerating every sign of shortage and pandering to the difficulties of the moment. But I recall the Depression when there was so much tragic suffering that the people of Australia were determined never to allow those conditions to be repeated. There were difficulties enough in those days, but they were difficulties of limited purchasing power. Our shortages are shortages of growth. They are signs of our progress and of our hopes, not of our despair. We are producing more goods than ever before in our history. There is more food in our homes. There are more houses being built. There are more people in our State: we have grown from a population of 2½ million in 1933 to a population of almost 3¼ million to-day in this State.

Labor’s policy is to bring production up to high levels: not to bring down standards and purchasing power, so that the shops are full, but our purses empty.