THE H.B. TRIBUNE. WEDNESDAY, DEC. 21, 1910. THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S PROPOSALS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 9, 21 December 1910, Page 5

THE H.B. TRIBUNE. WEDNESDAY, DEC. 21, 1910. THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S PROPOSALS.

Australia is arriving at a crisis in her Governmental conditions which .verges closely on pronounced Socialism, or it may prove a chaotic regime involving the individual States in complications and difficulties from which they will find it a troublesome matter to extricate themselves. In the first place, the heads of the present Government have pledged themselves to measures which promise great things for the masses, but which are absolutely impossible of being carried out without dislocation of local industries and menacing the ordinary security of individual ownership. In order to approach fulfilment of these pledges, the Federal Government has brought forward two proposals which will come before the people of the Commonwealth bv referenda in April next. These two proposals are on the subject of Constitutional Alteration of the Legislative Powe:-, and Constitutional Alteration of Monopolies. The simple purport of these, as the Sydney 'Daily Telegraph” interprets them, is “to increase immensely the p' .ent power of the Commonwealth by giving it control over every phase and detail of trade and commerce within the States, as well as between States, by investing it with a supreme and all-comprehending power of regulating wages and other conditions of employment as well as the prevention and settlement of disputes, including disputes in connection with the railways, and by empowering it to nationalise any industry or business of producing, manufacturing, or supplying any specified goods, or of supplying any specified services.” Against the proposed alterations an important section of the Australian community offer a strong resistance, subjecting them to the severest criticism, as being designed to centralise Government in a bureaucracy located at the capital, and destroying the federal spirit under which the Commonwealth was created. Not only so, but. with truth it must be said.

should the scheme for centralisaj tion of Government be sanctioned.> the bureaucracy would become a j potent executive throughout Australia. It would be able to take I over the railways even if it could j not declare them a monopoly and i acquire them. Between control of State debts and the conditions of employment, the way for doing this is open to them. There can be little doubt of power vested in this i bureaucracy being unable to nation-1 alise dairy, shipping, coal mining. | or any other industry. As long as. 1

the caucus remained in power, it could become an inquisitor in matters of purely local concern, and bring its measures to bear on every little business or service. Because of the manner in which these constitutional proposals appear to menace individual ownership, they are character iced as undemocratic. The aim to transfer the Parliaments of the Stales Io the Parl'anieut of the Commonwealth is. forciblv attacked. The industrial drag-net that is contemplated to be thrown out from headquarters could not possibly haul in ail the industries of Australia with their wide!}- diversified conditions without dislocation of trade and inevitable loss to, the people not only of then substance but of their personal independence. It may well be asked how the Commonwealth will he able to exercise its power over all the corporations of the individual States and prescribe their regulation and control under the new theories which are being exploited and which arc, after all. merely framed on the injudicious pledges given at the last election. Between the different parties in public opinion a sharp conflict will wage for the intervening time before the referenda voice the decision of Australia. Judging from the standpoint of the Federal Government’s attitude towards the masses, it seems more than possible that their measures will take effect, and we shall then be afforded an objectlesson in Socialism that may be turned to good use.