VERY LIKE ITALY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 276, 20 November 1926, Page 9

VERY LIKE ITALY.

LAW-MAKERS SUPREME. AUSTRALIA'S CONSTITUTION. COURT TO BE "DEFIED. (By Cable.—Press Association.—Copyright.) (Received 11.30 a.m.) SYDNEY, this day. The Industrial Commissioner, Mr. A. B. Piddington, K.C., has decided to defy the Commonwealth Arbitration Court order restraining the State Conciliation Committee from proceeding to make the award in regard to engineering apprentices. Mr. Piddington said that the awards of the Commonwealth arbiters were in effect permanent unless varied by the Commonwealth arbiters, whose sway could not be escaped by appeal to any Court or Parliament in'the Empire. "In this respect," Mr. Piddington continued, "the Australian Constitution now resembles nothing that exists or ever has existed in the British Empire." It had a close resemblance to the present Constitution of Italy, where democracy had been abolished. The law-making power in Australia, so far as labour laws or any special laws bearing on industrial matters were concerned, was now one of four persons, the three judges of the Arbitration Court and the chairman of the special tribunal. Mr. A. B. Piddington, K.C., the N.S.W. Industrial Commissioner, has been since 1911 actively engaged in questions affecting labour and industry. As a result of his recommendations as a Royal Commissioner in 1911 active steps were taken by the N.S.W. Government to procure the immigration of skilled tradesmen. In 1913 Mr. Piddington was appointed a Royal Commissioner to inquire into Industrial Arbitration in New South Wales and he was Chief Commissioner of the Inter-State Commission in the same year. In 1920 he was chairman of the Commonwealth Royal Commission to inquire into the basic wage. Last August Mr. Piddington delivered a scathing indictment against the shipowners when he delivered his judgment in the application for registration of the New South Wales branch of the Seamen's Union.