AN ORDER "SUSPENDED"

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 100, 30 April 1945, Page 4

AN ORDER "SUSPENDED"

"THE striking gas workers are back at work, and the supply has been •*■ partially restored. For this many thousands of people deprived of an essential service will be thankful, and in their thankfulness will not be disposed to reflect upon the method used to induce the strikers to return. The method was the familiar one of Ministerial concession. It was because two of their number had been directed to other employment, and objected to the direction, that the gas workers struck, and as the result, or reward, of their strike the direction has been "suspended." The Minister, Mr. O'Brien, "thought it could be done," and, after he had "got into touch" with the Minister of Manpower, Mr. McLagan, it was done. So easy it was to set aside the order of a constituted authority, an order such as thousands of other men, and women, have had to obey. The attitude of the Ministers in this case may be fairly contrasted with the attitude maintained in the case of John Hogan. Mr. Hogan, who is not a supporter of the Government—in fact, he had the temerity to oppose the Minister of Finance in his own electorate—was "manpowered" out of his journalistic post into a woollen mill. He objected that the direction was unreasonable. His objection did not result in the "suspension" of the order, but in prosecutions, seven days' imprisonment and more prosecutions, leading to a popular opinion that the Government is out to "get" him. The Government, of course, will not admit that there is any "politics" in the Hogan case; in that case, it will say, it is letting the administration and the law take their course. Nor, doubtless, will it admit that there is any "politics" in the gas works case, in which the administration and the law are not being allowed to take their course. The public, however, will draw its own conclusions, one of which may well be that the acting-Minister of Labour has shaped a sharp rod for his Government's back.