DAY IN PARLIAMENT

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 16, 19 July 1939, Page 10

DAY IN PARLIAMENT

PACE ACCELERATED

The sedate pace which Parliament has set itself since the session opened three weeks ago was accelerated with some suddenness and to some effect yesterday, when the Minister of Labour (the Hon. P. C. Webb) delivered his ultimatum to recalcitrant unions in the shape of his I.C. and A. Amendment Bill. Before the afternoon was over the Bill had passed through all stages in the Lower House, and the Legislative Council, sitting for the first time under its new Speaker (the Hon Mark Fagan), set the final seal jf legislative approval on the measure. It was a smart piece of work for a House that has been dawdling along in a nice friendly way so far, though it is probably fair to assume that members were delighted to be able to get their teeth into something tangible for a change. The Opposition's objection to the Bill was somewhat forced. The Government's case for the measure was ably put by the Minister of Labour and a former Minister of Labour (the Hon. H. T. Armstrong), both of whom made it clear that unions had either to abide by the decisions of the Arbitration Court or suffer deregistration. The move incorporated a principle that the Opposition could not condemn on broad grounds.

In the evening the Address-in-Reply debate was resumed, with particular attention to the guaranteed price being paid by Mr. W. 3. Poison (National, Stratford) and Mr. J. G. Barclay (Government, Marsden).

The important business before the Upper House in the afternoon was the appointment of the Hon. Mark Fagan as successor to the former Speaker, Sir Walter Carncross, who has retired after a record term of twenty-one years in that honourable position. The Hon. D. Wilson, national secretary of the Labour Party, succeeded Mr. Fagan as Leader of the Council, and officiated for the first time last evening.