Mr. Lawson, the Victorian Premier of five years, has been compelled to reconstruct his ministry in order to placate the Country party, which with a few malcontent ministerialists threatened him with destruction. In actual fact there is really no great change. Mr. Lawson has thrown overboard a few of the weaker of his own following, and taken in one city Liberal and several members of the Country party. The effect of this is still to be sean. There is no one of importance in the Country section, but the fact that it has been absorbed into the ministry and'the ministerial following is likely to react upon the Country party in the electorates. The Victorian Farmers' Union has for a long time been posing as an entirely independent political entity, and it was its strength which chiefly gave birth to the Country party in Federal politics. That party still professss to be a separate and. self-sufficient party. and to have merely loaned _its parliamentary leaders to Mr. Bruce in order that he might accomplish two things, one to keep Mr. W. M. Hughes out of office and the other to prevent the Labour party getting evan a temporary lease of power.
It will be interesting to watch the Victorian developments, chiefly in their effect upon the Federal situation. The chief issue is a redistribution of seats, the country electorates with one-third of the voting power holding over one half of the seats in the Assembly. While this state of affairs. persists Labour has no hope of gaining power in Victoria, and, being quite safe, Governments are disposed to take matters very easily. though this by no means makes them popular.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.