Controversy In Australia Over Worker’s Prosecution

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27632, 13 April 1955, Page 11

Controversy In Australia Over Worker’s Prosecution

(Australian Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

SYDNEY, April 12.

The case of a man who was fined for working during his annual holidays has startled many Australians. The fact that he was trying to earn extra money to support his sick child has added wrath to their astonishment that such a prosecution was possible. Correspondents in the newspapers called the case “an intrusion in a man’s private life,” and ‘‘interference with the liberty of a citizen.” The man. Norman Cremming, a truck driver, was fined £ 1 and ordered to pay costs when he appeared before the Chief Industrial Magistrate in Sydney in the first prosecution under the Annual Holidays Act. He admitted having worked for an express company while on holiday pay from another firm. “Reached the Limit” Cremming said he worked during his holidays to continue special medical treatment for his young son, who had been a RH baby. One correspondent, writing in the “Sydney Morning Herald,” said: “Surely the interference with the personal life of the citizen has reached the limit when he is not permitted to use his holidays as he thinks fit. Legislation of this type is in line with the unfortunate trend of current thought, which seeks to subject every phase of human activity and conduct to legally licensed interference from others. It has only stopped short of attempting to dictate what a man may think because, up to the present, at least, it has been impracticable to do so.” Another correspondent said: “What title have we got to claim this is a free country while this kind of interference with the liberty of the subject ties healthy manhood to idleness by enforcement, often when the individual would prefer to work rather than take a holiday.” Answering a question in the Legislative Assembly about the Cremming ease, the Minister of Labour and Industry (Mr A. Landa) said that what a worker did in his holidays was his own business. “But he should not work for his own employer in his holidays.” he added. “If he does he is defeating the spirit of the Holidays Act. He could go on for years and never get a holiday.” Mr Landa pointed out that Cremming had pleaded guilty, and said: “'Rie Magistrate made no interpretation. He felt it was a matter to which the man had pleaded guilty, and imposed a nominal fine.” The fact that Cremming was prosecuted by a union secretary (from the Transport Workers* Union) also came in for some adverse comment, although it was by no means the first time that a union had launched a prosecution for a breach of industrial law. Under this system, half the fine imposed goes to the prosecuting union. This aspect of the case was commented on by a special correspondent in the “Sydney Morning Herald,” who asked: “Are we developing an informer system in industry?” He added: “Prosecutions like those of Cremming do indicate a growing trend to use the informers—which means domination, or worse, by potential informers and those who employ them. The law—the present industrial law—obviously gives power to pinchbeck dictators. In fact it is difficult to see where this principle of spying and prosecution will end.” “Paid Informers” The correspondent said the Australian character could have li ff le place for paid informers. Australians who had lived in Europe before 1939 would remember that Hitlerism began on similar lines. “Is it an overstatement to suggest that if the Cremming case is allowed to go unchallenged, no man who belongs to a union (as he must under compulsory unionism) will be sure that

he is not under surveillance—that otru-1 SPy i’ n > ot watchin g him in his office, on his lorry, or beside him in me ■ factory or on the wharf’ furthe?’ ““S' - a . pri ? ci P le be pressed turther? Plainly, it can. The Chi-f Magistrate said bluntly that the CremS Wi ? s the first of its kind 2® ha d ever known. But he had to ? h » unfortunate father guilty. Hr Si ad -‘° fine him. He had to order him to pay costs.

..“ i ? e f e - indeed, is a case which, in nt s rests of our national freedom, needs an inquiry. It is democracy in Handcuffs. Surely there must be a