Kookaburra Finance

Fond and normal though he is as a grandfather, strange as the ways of the Kookaburra* are the financial maneuvers of Premier John Thomas Lang of New South Wales, eccentric Laborite. Weeks ago he proposed to fatten the flabby treasury of his province by issuing "turnip money," i.e. paper money secured not by gold, but by the natural wealth of the country, turnips, mutton, wheat, etc. (TIME, Feb. 23). Dissuaded from this he next proposed that Australia should insist that Great Britain give her as favorable terms of debt settlement as Great Britain had received from the U. S. Last week he went further. On April 1, New South Wales must pay certain bondholders in Britain and the U. S. $4,273,140 in interest. Still riled by what he considers Britain's exorbitant interest charges, Laborite Lang suddenly announced that the State would not pay the $3,646,255 owing to British bondholders, but would pay U. S. holders of the same bonds the $626,885 due them.

There was no surer way of rousing rage. Australians disagree among themselves about almost everything (State jealousy has given the Dominion three separate railway gauges) but they have in common a grand wholehearted despisal of anything and everything to do with the U. S.

"They are paying the foreigner first!" shouted Canberra M. P.'s last week. Dominion Prime Minister James Henry Scullin, more tactful, opined that "the impending default by New South Wales will undoubtedly have a detrimental effect on the good name of the Australian people and on their credit as a nation."

London papers headlined LANG'S MAD DECISION. "Lang has been as bad as his word," said the Manchester Guardian. In the House of Commons, Dominion Secretary Thomas announced that he had received "a most painful surprise." Although U. S. payments were promised, New South Wales bonds dropped on Wall Street from 62 1/2 to 56. Outraged Australians talked darkly of putting the whole state under martial law. Members of the Commonwealth Parliament from northern New South Wales and the Riverina district threatened, like Yancey of Alabama,* to secede.

The Dominion Government, alarmed at the prospect, quickly arranged with London to pay $3,500,000 should Premier Lang really default. London bankers announced that ample Dominion funds were already on deposit in London to do this.

*The Kookaburra, or laughing jackass, is a sharp-beaked Australian kingfisher that kills and swallows snakes, laughs raucously.

*William Lowndes Yancey, pre-Civil WarRepresentative from Alabama, one of the loudest and earliest U. S. secessionist.

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