The Great Game

Across the green leather benches and jarrah parquet floors of Canberra's House of Representatives the honorable members shouted and carried on like aborigines at a corroboree. Through three acrimonious days the Labor Government and the Opposition called each other names, including traitor. Then, after beating a no-confidence motion by one vote, Prime Minister John Curtin decided to take the issue to the country. A general election was slated for August.

The issue was strictly domestic politics. Dyspeptic John Curtin had angered the Opposition by declaring publicly that the Jap invasion threat had passed. That looked as if the Prime Minister, with an eye on the regular elections in November, was making the biggest claim in Commonwealth political history: that Labor had saved the country. The Opposition's leader, Arthur W. ("Artie the Artful") Fadden, presumably thought that Curtin's popularity would rise as Allied prospects in the Pacific improved. Besides, the politicians wanted a showdown over controversial labor, social security and food policies.

No one was sure how Australia's 4,000,000 voters (800,000 in khaki) were thinking. But John Curtin's willingness to face the country next month showed how he was thinking.

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