CONSTRUCTION FOR WAR

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23819, 12 December 1942, Page 5

CONSTRUCTION FOR WAR

CRISIS IN AUSTRALIA

THREAT TO VITAL WORKS (OC) SYDNEY, December 4. In the last 12 months, a remarkable change has come to many areas in Australia’s outback. From the tropical jungle of Northern Queensland to the sandy wastes of the “dead-heart’ centre, men have woven a pattern of their works —new roads, new aerodromes. munition and oil dumps, and many other constructional jobs that the exigencies of a continent's defence demand. . All this had to be planned in a hurry when Japan pushed into the southwest Pacific, and with equal haste, the plans had to be executed. Thus the Government set up the Allied Works Council and for its director chose Mr E. G. Theodore, once a Federal Treasurer in a Labour Government, now a wealthy newspaper proprietor and Fiji gold-mine owner. Mr Theodore’s genius for organisation. drive, and shrewdness fitted him for the huge task, but as he had severed his association with the Labour movement, he had not the full support of the unions, with whom he had to seek close co-operation to achieve the project before him. Relations were not improved when Mr Theodore chose as his director of personnel, Lieutenant Frank Packer, his co-partner in Consolidated Press (Sydney "Daily Telegraph” and “Australian Women’s Weekly”), who was seconded from the Army.

Corps of 60,000 Men

The work, however, went on and the organisation grew until the Civil Construction Corps, as it was called, numbered 60,000 men. Some of the men were volunteers, others were transferred from non-essential industries. Camps were established overnight and work begun next day. Naturally, hardships faced the men and in some places living conditions were not the best. All this was excusable considering the haste with which the work was carried out, but it created a core of discontent which hardened under the constant provocativeness of a minority who did not appreciate the urgency of the work.

Realising the difficulties that confronted the Director-General and his officers, the Government framed regulations imposing heavy penalties for men who refused to work or broke the conditions of their employment. This ensured continuity of the work, but it increased the animosity towards the executives. Dismissal of Men A crisis was precipitated when Lieutenant Packer discharged four men (two of them holding union positions) from the Allied Works Council staff, allegedly for obstructing the organisation. There was a further outcry when two men, who had left a camp in Queensland without permission and arrived in Sydney, were arrested and held in gaol for four days before being charged. When taken before the Court they claimed they had come to Sydney to place details of conditions at the camp before their unions to prevent trouble. They were found guilty of having failed to continue work during hours of duty determined by the Director-General of Allied Works, and were each ordered to enter into a bond of £2O to comply with the regulations. The buildings group of unions in Sydney, many of whose members are in the corps, threatened to call a strike on December 21 unless Lieutenant Packer was dismissed and the four men he had dismissed from the Allied Works Council were reinstated. They were not supported by the Trades and Labour Council of New South Wales, but that body alternatively asked the Prime Minister (Mr Curtin) to hold a public inquiry into tiie administration of the Allied Works Council, suspend Mr Theodore and Lieutenant Packer, and reinstate the four dismissed men. Mr Theodore’s Statement Indicating that he will not be intimidated by a personal campaign, directed at himself, Mr Theodore published a long statement in to-day's newspapers. “The Allied Works Council has been represented as a Gestapo,” said Mr Theodore. “Let us look at the facts. The council was founded by a Labour Government to complete, in the shortest possible time, works without which Australia would have been unready to resist invasion. The Government decided to call up compulsorily the necessary labour to carry out these urgent projects. “Under the Government’s direction, I had to send men, from all walks of life, to distant parts of Australia, just as the Army sent members of the militia to Darwin, New Guinea, and other parts of Australia. The men’e readiness to go, and to work when they arrived, depended on their ability to understand how important it was for Australia that the work should be done.

"Some of the men did understand, and accepted without complaint the inconvenience, and often hardship, inseparable from compulsory and emergency service. The sensible man realised that there was a basic difference between his kind of compulsory service and that imposed on a soldier ia the front line. For one thing, his life was not endangered.”