Australia's

Benevolent

Dictatorship

One who has known the political scene in Australia and New Zealand intimately for 60 years and especially the Australian scene since 1916 —™ay be permitted to disagree with the inferences drawn by Don Whitington, who has just produced a book called “The Rulers”.

MR- WHITINGTON surveys 15 **‘"■7 years of Liberal rule in Aus tralia, under Menzies, and the finds the answer “disquieting”, because ‘although the forms and procedures of democracy have been preserved, Australia is ruled today by a dictatorship—a benevolent dictator ship, it is true, but a dictatorship, nevertheless”.

His conclusion probably is right.

Australia—to its great profit and content—has been for years, and still is, under the very competent dictator ship of R, G. Menzies; and heaven help the country when nature has her way, and Menzies passes on, and the now happy South Pacific nation re turns to government by the pro fessional politicians.

Machine Politics Government by professional politicians is not really democracy.

True democracy disappeared from the governments of Australia and New Zealand when the Parliaments passed into the control of machine politics, as expressed in that very dirty word, caucus. This reviewer is old enough to have seen it happen—first in New Zealand and then in Australia.

The British type of Parliament, as originally planned and put into opera tion, was the nearest thing to true democracy that this world ever is likely to see. The electoral com munities selected the best man avail able in each area to represent them in Parliament; and the outstanding men in each Parliament naturally be came the government. Political creeds developed naturally; the electors were either radical thinkers or conservative thinkers; and so

political parties came into being, and electors made their choice, usually upon two grounds—the character and personality of the candidate, and the colour of his political thinking.

Then, some 50 years ago, trade unionism created the political Labour Party, and the machinery of trade union organisation was employed ruthlessly to regiment and direct the votes of trade unionists in electing Parliaments, and the Parliamentary party caucus was set up to dragoon members and control their votes inside the Parliaments; and that was the end of democracy.

The success of the political Labour Party in regimenting trade union votes, and using the Parliamentary caucus to deprive Parliament mem bers of a free and deliberative choice —forced the non-Labour Parties

for their own protection, into simil party machine organisation, includii the caucus.

Ever since, decade by decade, tl quality of the men selected by tl machines has fallen, until Parli ments now are held almost in publ contempt. The great majority i members are little, mediocre peop who have crawled on their belli through the lobbies of the politic bosses, in order to secure machii nomination and automatic election.

These are the men who a supposed to understand and dire the nation’s government in an a| when the overwhelming march ( science is creating every d* economic and social and politic problems of terrifying complex'it Men of very limited ability—some < them really little more than figures <

political fun—are thrust into the Parliaments, to wallow in un accustomed luxuries and shock the nations with the puerilities of their broadcast speeches, while the really competent men of our times, who should be directing our Parliaments, are rejected by the political machines —to which, naturally, they will not submit.

This new book by Mr. Whitington —who is a skilled and experienced political commentator and an attrac tive writer—describes the political events of the last 15 years in Aus tralia, and shows how and why Sir Robert Menzies just naturally became a benevolent dictator; but as an analysis of the conditions which make a benevolent autocracy possible in the present state of Parlia mentarianism, it is quite useless.

Mr. Whitington would have done a real public service if he had devoted at least a section of his book to an examination of the reasons why a benevolent dictatorship like that of R. G. Menzies is so successful and popular, and why the Parliamentary system, as it has developed in the last 50 years, is held in general contempt. However, the book does contain a history of political events in the last 15 years, competently surveyed and presented. It is a pity

it lacks an index.

Rwr.

(THE RULERS, by Don Whitington.

Published by Lansdowne Press, of Mel bourne. 32/6.)