SYDNEY’S GOVERNMENT HOUSE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 3696, 4 December 1912, Page 5

SYDNEY’S GOVERNMENT HOUSE.

STATE GOVERNMENT OBSTIN- - ATELY DETERMINED.

(UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT] SYDNEY, Dec. 3.

The Commonwealth has' formally handed over Government House to the State Government, which proposes to make a big demonstration when possession is taken.

In the Assembly, petitions have been presented and protests made against the Government proposals. Replying to a question whether the Government would allow the people to decide by referenda before the Government finally decide to desecrate the historic .house, Ah- AfcGowen (State Premier) declared that the Government had decided on a certain course, and would take that course and accept the consequences.

[Writing recently, our Sydney correspondent stated recently that the trouble over the eviction of the Governor-General from Sydney Government House had assumed a new phase. It was discovering that the Government had been dealing, in-a high-handed fashion, with premises which did not belong to it. One investigator has discovered that the land on which the historic residence stands was reserved to the Crown by Governor Phillip as a residence for the representative of Royalty. It is known that the titular Premier, Air McGowen, was opposed to the eviction of Lord Denman, and it is not likely that he was alone in urging a more prudent policy. It seems to have been a "placard” to conciliate the Republicans, not the philosophical section, which is content to await the normal development of political forces, but the

"Beds,” who want to overturn everything here and now. But there were quite enough real sources of danger to the Labor cause without gratuitously alienating the loyalists among its supporters. Mr Holman seems to have thought that, at the last elections, Labor won by its own inherent strength. It did nothing of the kind. It won by the votes of the men who are not unionists or Socialists, but who thought that they would like to try an experiment. It would have been wise to endeavor by all legitimate meu.s to retain this support, so highly serviceable. Instead of which ! But I must leave history to tell its own tale.]