IMPERIAL RELATIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 217, 13 September 1930, Page 7

IMPERIAL RELATIONS.

FORTHCOMING CONFERENCE.

PROBLEMS TO BE FACED.

IMPORTANCE OF "ROUND TABLE."

Some of the problems which face the Imperial Government and the representatives of the Dominion at the forthcoming Imperial Conference were outlined to members of the International Relations Club at the Auckland University College recently by Mr. W. H. Cocker.

It was a truism to say that the British Empire defied classification as a political organism, said the speaker. The legal framework of the Empire had remained practically unaltered since the. .grant of responsible government,, but. by means of conventions and customs, which were political rather than legal the relations of the different parts of the Empire had been completely transformed.

An important factor in bringing about these changes had been the Imperial Conferences. When the conference of 1926 met inter-Imperial relations were at a point of crisis. In South Africa, though secession had been dropped from the Government's programme by reason of a compromise with the Labour party, the sentiment in favour of secession was very strong among the Nationalists. Ireland, having accepted Dominion status as a compromise, was fighting hard to secure complete autonomy. Canada had just gone through a constitutional crisis, in which the right of the GovernorGeneral to override the advice of his responsible Ministers had been the crucial issiie. Australia and New Zealand, on the other hand, were satisfied with existing conditions and desired no change.

The resolutions of the 1926 Conference, Mr. Cocker said, did much to allay the crisis. Drafted by Lord Balfour," they were a monument of ingenuity and common sense. Though they probably did little more than define existing practice, they were couched in such terms that every Prime Minister was able to return to his particular Dominion and report that the resolutions meant just what that Dominion wanted.

"The chief constitutional work of the forthcoming conference would be to give effect to the spirit of these resolutions," he added. The committee of experts set up by the last conference had reported that in order to do this certain legal amendments were required. This report would be one of the main topics of the conference. In the first place, it was recommended that the present limitation which prevented a Dominion legislature from passing laws having effect outside its own territory should be removed. The importance of this for New Zealand was that the jurisdiction of the Arbitration Court in making shipping awards would automatically be increased, and any lingering doubts as to our complete legislative supremacy over Samoa would be removed.

Another recommendation was that Dominion Parliaments should be given power to override Imperial legislation even though such legislation had been specifically declared to apply to the Dominions. The remaining recommendations related to technical matters such as nationality and merchant shipping