The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1903. THE FEDERAL ARBITRATION BILL.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 212, 5 September 1903, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1903. THE FEDERAL ARBITRATION BILL.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance. And the aood that we can do.

In the history of colonial legislation few measures have roused greater public interest or stirred up keener controversy than the Arbitration Bill now before the Federal Parliament. Drafted by Mr. Kingston, the bill is an extremely thor-ough-going and comprehensive piece of legislation. It establishes a Federal Arbitration Court of three members —a Supreme Court Judge as president, one representative of employers and one of workers —to hold office for seven years, at a salary of £600 per annum a-piece. This Court is to have jurisdiction over the entire industrial system of the Commonwealth. It is to settle all industrial disputes, and fix wages and hours of work, determining at the same time the relative rights and duties of employers aud employed. It is to be guided "by equity and conscience and not by technicalities"; it may order preferential employment of any given class of persons; it may set up private conciliation boards; and its registrar, from whose decision there is no appeal, may bring under the notice of the Court any industrial dispute which in his opinion demands its attention. The bill has been summed up as the boldest attempt yet made iv the history of the civilised world to bring all private industries under the control of a State tribunal; and this description can hardly be said to bo an exaggeration.

Naturally enough the Labour . party throughout the Commonwealth is jubilant at the introduction of the bill. The workers of Australia support the bill because, as one of their leaders has said, they are tired of "the other Hiing." The maritime strike, the shearers' strike, tlie Broken Hill strike, the coal strikes, and the Victorian railway-strike have left a deep impression upon the popular mind. The workers in every State are suffering to-day from "the disastrous consequences of these long-drawn-out and bitter struggles." Voluntary conciliation, they assert, has been a complete failure, and they believe that the record of the compulsory system in New South Wales and New Zealand fully justifies its adoption throughout the Commonwealth. The employers and capitalists in the States, on the other' hand, generally condemn the-bill. It is in the opinion of tbc Sydney shipowners, for example, "an iniquitous measure, harmful and mischiev-

ous to the workers themselves, and ruinout to their employers." As might be anticipated, a great deal of nonsense has been 'talked and written in Australia about the dangers of labour legislation, the probability that it will drive capital from the country, and the certainty that it must injure the interests of the whole continent. We in New Zealand, with our long experience of labour legislation, can afford to laugh at these gloomy warnings. All of these evils were prophesied when our own system of compulsory arbitration was inaugurated, aud none of them have come to pass. "Labour legislation," says the manifesto of one of the largest bodies of employers in the Commonwealth, "invariably has the effect of raising ill-feeling between employers and employees, and it will not in the end benefit the workers." Seeing that a large proportion of Australian employers are still wedded to the mediaeval superstition that labour legislation is "an unwarrantable interference with liberty of private action," it is easy to understand the loud and angry protests raised by one section of the community against the Federal Arbitration Bill.

It must, however, be admitted that from the standpoint of the Federal Constitution there are serious objections to the bill in its present form. __ year ago the Federal Government consulted the various States as to the advisability of enacting a general law on this subject, applicable to the whole Commonwealth. The Premier of Victoria seems to have said nothing, but the Premiers of Tasmania, New South Wales, Western Australia and South Australia all replied to

the eli'eet that such legislation would necessarily interfere with the rights of the State. Governments already defined by the Federal Constitution- This reply is obvious enough, and in the Bill it does not seem that any attniept

has "been made to meet it. The Dili is | .so drawn that if it becomes law i: will; •be easy to bring all industries con_inon to mere than one State within its scope, j.tut meantime, in New South Wales there are about I_o unions working under the awa.ds of the State Arbitration Court; in Western Australia \\ \ similai' system is in active operatic:;, a>l' in Vid'oria about 30 indus£rir»i are working under the awards or the Wages Boards. What will happen when an at-, tempt is made to bring these variorum-: dustrial arrangements within the action' of Federal .legislation it is Impossible to _ conceive. 3£r G. H. Reid has s.*il em-; phatieally that the Federal Government! has not'the power to legislate with re-i ward to anything that a State industrial autnority can ov cannot do. The net re- j suit must be that the industries c<t the' CoTomonwea-'th will be subject to the au-j thority of two independent and ir-j responsible masters —"two distinct and| separate tribunals, each entirely independent of the other and having juris-! diction over the same subjects." It is e.sy to imagine the confusion, conflict and litigation that must inevitably ensue, and this blot' upon the construe-

tion of the bill is sufficient to explain much of the opposition to it in its present form.

But the Labour party, ignoring the Constitutional difficulty, and thinking only of the principles involved, insist that the bill does not go far enough. They demand that not only shaji the bill be passed at once; but that it must be applied to the whole shipping trade of Australia—both oceanic and coastal. This was the point on which Mr Kingston, who had drafted the bill, joined issue with his colleagues. "Shorn of application to seamen,." he wrote to Sir E. Barton, "the Federal Conciliation Bill would be a mockery for which it would be idle to expect earnest support." Mr Kingston's colleagues tried In vain to conciliate him by promising that the shipping trade should receive adequate treatment in the promised Navigation Act. But the Federal Minister of Customs is a singularly ' obstinate man, and rather than even defer the question for a more favourable season, he resigned his post. Since then the Trades Councils and Labour unions of Australia have frequently urged this point upon Sir E. Barton's notice, and the Federal Premier has just explained that the whole of the coastal trade is now to be brought within the scope of the bill. We have yet to see whether this concession will satisfy the Labour leaders who, of course, regard the bill as distinctively a Labour measure. The Federal Opposition, however, hold that it is merely a bribe offered by Sir E. Barton for the support of the Labour Party, which holds the balance of power in the Federal Parliament; and quite apart from the industrial and constitutional questions involved, political causes are thus likely to make the fight over the bill a long and desperate