The Australian Lesson and British Expenditure The transformation of opinion
in Australia is bound to have some influence here and it will be interesting to watch the sequels. For example, there is now sitting the Three-Party inquiry into the Unemployment Insurance Fund. It will be extremely difficult for any Labour speaker in the face of what has happened in Australia to make out a ease for deliberately removing the Fund from an actuarial basis—which for a long time has unhappily been no more than a theory—and for fixing grants disproportionate to thOiational revenue or to the revenue of individual industries. The greatest blessing would be if all the Parties could agree upon some scheme, as humane as possible of course, which would remove the whole question of unemployment grants from the haggling of the electoral market. Democracy might then be saved from the danger of falling into one of its deepest pits. No one can ignore the significance of the fact that the Australian political leaders, " better taught " by bitter experience, have turned for their salvation to what the Labour Party is fond of contemptuously describing as the " Treasury point of view." * * * *
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