Harsh things are being said and written about the Labor Party by the unkind Murdoch press during this election campaign. But even those bitter papers lack the savage anti-Labor verve Perth's Sunday Times was showing 100 years ago this week.
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"LABOR PARTY OR LOAFER PARTY?
"At Kalgoorlie the other day the cranks, agitators, wowsers, boneheads and opportunists who call themselves the Labor Party completed their triennial conference.
"In accordance with their policy of keeping things as dark as possible they excluded the representatives of the "capitalistic press" [but] happily there are not many who yearn for this information. The public has had such a sickener of Labor politics during the last five years that it is nowise anxious to know what [Labor premier] Scaddan intends doing next.
"Since October 1911 the gentlemen who lorded it at Kalgoorlie have been in office. And what are the fruits of their exertions? A deficit of £1,575,000, a dreary succession of administrative scandals.
"Their childlike simplicity, combined with their rotten habit of doing things in the dark, has cost the people hundreds of thousands of pounds. But what does the Loafer Party care? Swollen with pride and drunk with power, borrowing recklessly and spending insanely, denouncing employers as robbers it rushes blindly towards its goal, which is commercial disaster and State bankruptcy.
"In all our political history, there has never been a more striking transition from financial stability to financial chaos or a swifter descent from lofty professions to degrading practices."
