ORDERS INVALID

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 123, 26 May 1944, Page 5

ORDERS INVALID

N.S.W. MAN-POWER CONTROL

SYDNEY, May 25. Man-power orders directing people to work in canneries, factories, or for any other specified private employer are without effect, according to a judgment given by the New South Wales Full Court today. The Court unanimously decided that the section of the manpower regulations under %yhicn such directions are given is invalid.

The validity of the regulations was challenged by two employees of a city firm who had been directed to change their employment. They sought statutory prohibitions preventing any action following their conviction by a Magistrate for disobeying the manpower orders. . "The regulation as it stands," said the Chief Justice, Sir Frederick Jordan "would, if valid, reduce the population of Australia to a state of serfdom more abject than any which obtained in the Middle Ages. There is nothing in the Commonwealth Constitution which authorises the executive of the Government to impose upon the people of Australia a status of villenage." The High Court of Australia has granted the Commonwealth leave to appeal against the Full Court's decision. "So far as I know this is the first time any Court in the British Empire has chosen to characterise necessary man-power organisation as imposing serfdom," said the Acting Prime Minister (Mr. F. M. Forde), commenting on the Court's decision.

"The regulations were imposed purely temporarily—for the duration of the war and for the sake of saving the very life of the country. "The public will reject this implied reflection on their patriotism. % By means of the man-power system we were able to help greatly in preventing the threatened invasion."