Liberal Victory

By an exceedingly narrow margin, Australia's free-enterprising Liberal government hung onto power this week. From the hot white sands of Woomera to the waterfalls of Tasmania, across a vast and booming land almost the size of the U.S., 4,800,000 Aussies cast their (compulsory) ballots and divided them so evenly that Labor, the loser, actually got some 200,000 more votes than the victors. It was only because the electoral gerrymanders favor rural constituencies (where the Liberal coalition is strong) that the government kept control of the House of Representatives by at least seven seats. But the margin, though narrow, was enough: Prime Minister Robert Menzies, 59, was back in office for another three years.

Pig-iron Bob. The campaign was one of the dirtiest in Australia's 53 years of responsible self-government. Menzies, an able politician with a handsome, Warren G. Harding look, was not on speaking terms with his principal opponent, Herbert ("Doc") Evatt, the stocky, ambitious leader of Australian Labor. Both are from New South Wales, the sons of country shopkeepers, born in the same year (1894) and both able lawyers. But Evatt accused Menzies of being the tool of "trusts and combines," and Menzies fought back with charges of "disgraceful, shameful, mercenary bidding for votes."

"We present our accounts with pride," Menzies told a Melbourne audience. "Australia is more prosperous, more productive, possessed of more social justice, better defended, and has more friends than ever before." But trying the same line in Sydney, a strongly Labor city, Menzies ran into trouble. He was reciting the impressive statistics of industrial production (steel up 40%, electricity, 50%) when a "baiter" from the rear piped up with the question: "What about pig iron, Bob?" The crowd roared with laughter, for "Pig Iron Bob" was the bitter nickname accorded to Bob Menzies in the days before World War II, when he permitted pig iron to be exported to Japan. Menzies joined in the laughter, but his reply caused even more: "Glad you mentioned it. Pig iron is up by 50%, and judging from some of the people in this hall, production of gas must be up more than that . . ."

Flying with Crows. Labor campaigned on promises--fatter pensions, lower taxes, better medical benefits -- but did not say how it would pay for them without landing Australia in another inflationary cycle. Neither party gave much thought to Australia's foreign policy. Said the Sydney Morning Herald in disgust: "Indo-China might be as remote as Timbuktu." Yet Communism may have been the issue that kept Bob Menzies in power. The arrest of MVD Agent Vladimir Petrov and the rescue of his wife (TIME, April 26) gave the Liberals a readymade chance to revive their hoary cry: that Evatt and his party are on the same side as the Reds. To his audiences, Menzies quoted a Communist document instructing the comrades "to deliver the main attack on the Menzies government." Said Menzies: "Now we know what side the Communists are on."

No Red Seats. Desperately, the Labor Party fought to shake itself free from the unwelcome Communist leeches. Evatt was especially worried because his party depends on the large Catholic vote in Australia's big cities. "I tell Menzies and his agents," cried Evatt, in righteous anger, "that if they impute to me ... any sympathy with Communism, they are the vilest liars in the world."

In last week's elections, 41 Communist candidates polled about 45,000 votes but won no seats at all. One likely result of Menzies' return to power is that the government will find ways of making this the last election in which the Communists will fight as a party.

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