The Evening Star TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1936. THE GOVERNMENT’S PROGRAMME.

Evening Star, Issue 22272, 25 February 1936, Page 8

The Evening Star TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1936. THE GOVERNMENT’S PROGRAMME.

Mr Savage's summary of the main proposals to be submitted to the session of Parliament which begins about the middle of next month is welcome, because it provides something like a definite outline of the Government’s immediate intentions. Ministers have made so many statements since they took office that it has been difficult to keep track of them all, to know' what plans might be expected to take precedence of others, or to estimate just w’hat cheerfully announced principles might mean when they were reduced to practice. Probably there is not a member of the Labour Party who would not admit to-day that it is much easier to put forward ideas for an election manifesto than to translate them into legislation, with avoidance of the difficulties w'hich their closer inspection, necessitated by that process, may often reveal for the first time, and care that the final result shall mean more than the supersession of one set of disadvantages by another. The members of the Government, and those they have coppted Jo hgjj> tiom, have been jUligent

in the task of preparing their programme for the House, and they have been helped by some circumstances for which they have reason to be thankful. In so far as the trend of their measures will be Socialistic their predecessors, to no small extent, as well as certain tendencies of the times, have prepared the way for them Power to take over the control of wheat', flour, and bread marketing and of dairy produce, if that should follow, was generously provided by the Board of Trade Act. Doubts of how it might be used by a Labour Government were behind requests, made by certain sections over a number of years, for that Act to be repealed, but the' repeal would not have mattered long. The Labour Government to-day is in a position to pass any Act it pleases. A good deal of the system that applies now' to wheat, bread, and flour was inaugurated by Distributors Ltd., and a committee of the Manufacturers - Federation had prepared the way for co-ordination which Mr Sullivan now envisages for the secondary industries. Unemployment methods can be modified under the existing Unemployment Act. Statements made by Ministers from time to time of what they intended to do have been more emphatic than specific. It is not clear that the Government is yet committed in a final sense to the completion of even one unfinished railwa3 r , or the abolition of either the Railways Board or the Transport Co-ordination Board. The precise manner in which guaranteed prices for dairy produce are to be applied is still a subject of investigation. Even Mr_ Savage’s summary of the immediate programme leaves a great room for detail to be added. The Arbitration Act is to be amended “ with the object of restoring the facilities which the workers previously enjoyed under the Act,” though not all workers have been agreed, till now, that that will be a benefit. But “ there will be something in addition,” says the Prime Minister, and that “ something ” is left in vagueness. Financial legislation will be necessary, but it is too early yet to say what form it will take. There will also be legislation dealing with the position of farmer mortgagors, with the object of the avoidance of five-year stays, and ultimately it will be sought to put back the Mortgage Corporation on a basis similar to that of the State Advances Department. The Railways Act will be amended to give the Minister, and not the Railways Board, the controlling voice in policy, but that might be done without absolutely abolishing the board. Pensions are to be liberalised, and shorter working hours, in more than the Public Works Department, will be provided for, though too much haste in that matter might make its own complications. The Government will have busy times before it while it prepares even these first plans for legislation, and they do not include such subjects as education and the simplifying of local government. It has to decide in what proportions Mr Semple’s ideal of u distributing population from the cities to the country is to be combined with Mr Sullivan’s ideas for manufactures, and other problems of co-ordination doubtless will emerge. But, for all its contempt for commissions, the Government is not disdaining to bear the opinions of others—of farmers, of transport authorities, and dairying experts, whom it has co-opted on a committee, before mapping its actual course. It is anxious to work soberly as well as hopefully, and its hopefulness is the right mood |or the country.