LABOUR'S DOINGS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 75, 31 March 1910, Page 7

LABOUR'S DOINGS.

NEWCASTLE MATTERS. NORTHERN WAGES BOARD. SITTING RESUMED TO-DAY. By Telegraph. -Preti Association.— Copyright (Received March 31, 11.30 a.m.) SYDNEY, This Day. The Northern Mining Wages Board resumed ite sittings at Newcastle. FEDERAL ARBITRATION LAW. AN IMPORTANT POINT. DECISION BY~HIGH COURT. SYDNEY, 30th March. An important point of arbitration law has been decided by the High Court on questions of law submitted for its determination. The main issue was: — V\ hether, under the constitution, it is competent for the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration to make any award whirh is inconsistent with certain awards or determinations of the State Wages Board? The contention was set up that, in making an award in a dispute extending beyond the limits of a State, the president of the Commonwealth Arbitration Court was not bound by any Slate law regulating industry, but might prescribe whatever he thought necessary in order to bring about an effectual settlement. The Chief Justice, Sir Samuel Griffith, said that arbitration meant primarily a determination by a tribunal which was not an ordinary Court of Justice bound to administer the strict rules of common and statute law, but a tribunal selected by the parties to a controversy to which both submitted themselves, and by whoae determination they agreed to be bound. The efficacy of the award was derived from the agreement of submission ; although statutory provisions for its enforcement were now commonly adopted, the foundation of the authority of the arbitrators was the consensual agreement of the parties. In course of time the meaning has been extended bo as to include determination by arbiters, some of whom were not necessarily the free choice of the parties, but this difference in the mode of choice did not alter the fundamental notion of the function of an arbiter, which was to make a determination that the parties were bound to obey. It followed that whatever the parties could lawfully agree to do, they might be ordered to do ; and whatever they could not lawfully agree to do, they could not be ordered to do by the tribunal. These conclusions were incontrovertible, and indeed were not controverted as far as regarded an urbiv ration tribunal lawfully established within any civilised State. By a majority the court answered the question in the negative.