Australia Draws the Line
Australia; forts° long a great laboratory of economic and social experiment, is now preparing to extend its pioneering activities into the field of politics with a Bill to dissolve the Communist Party, prevent its re-emergence under another name, and disqualify declared Communists from employment under the Commonwealth. This is probably the most difficult and dangerous experiment so far, but the Australian Government has the right to make it. Such a measure was a plank in the platform on which Mr. Menzies returned to power ; the report of a Royal Commissioner to the Victorian Government on Communism in Victoria gives chapter and verse for the charges of subversive activity brought against the party ; and the exposed and isolated defensive position of Australia gives urgency to the need to prevent treachery from within. In such circumstances the automatic presumption in favour of dealing with Communists by means of the laws which apply to all other potential trouble-makers is no doubt weakened. But the grave dangers associated with the naming of Communists by security officials who cannot, as Mr. Menzies has pointed out, appear in court are obvious enough. Such exceptional measures must be accompanied by exceptional safeguards against the abuse of the new powers or their extension outside the field they are now intended to cover. This is, of course, a matter for Australians to settle in their own way, and it seems likely from the present attitude of the Labour Opposition, which is holding its fire, and the Australian Council of Trade Unions, which is already putting up a barrage of protest, that the preliminary discussion will be thorough. No country that has had a taste of the usual Communist devices of violence, intimidation and fraud can afford to ignore the coming argument in Australia, even though, as in the case of Canada, conditions are so different that the possibility of a change in the law can be discounted. But the best answer to Communism will remain not a legal barrier but a population determined not to be exploited and duped
