Labour’s Policy in the Making

Manawatu Times, Volume 70, Issue 280, 27 November 1945, Page 5

Labour’s Policy in the Making

Triennial Australian Conference Opens (By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Special Con-espondent.) Received Monday, 5.5 p.m. SYDNEY, Nov. 26. Decisions vital to every Australian will he made by the Federal triennial Australian Labour Party conference, which opened in Melbourne to-day. Tne conference will- discuss and decide the broad outline of Labour’s policy. The agenda contains nearly 230 items, ranging from demands for the abolition of the State Parliaments to the immediat introduction of Socialism.

Another referendum early next year asking for wider Federal powers is sure to be urged on the Commonwealth Government by the conference. Delegates from all States agree that the ground has been cut from under Labour’s feet by the High Court judgment against the Commonwealth on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Act (the free medicine scheme).

The main items to be discussed at the conference, which is expected to last a week, are: The future of the arbitration system, an increase in the basic wage, the introduction of a general 4uhour working week, the abolition oi wage-pegging and the means test, the future of Australian defence, Government intervention in unlawful strikes, the causes and remedies of industrial unrest, and the nationalisation of key Industries.

One political correspondent says that, with the agenda bristling with politically impossible demands, it had seemed that Mr. Chifley was in for a torrid session, but the High Court’s judgment on the free medicine scheme will enable him to say in effect: ‘‘The Commonwealth’s hands are tied. We have not the power to alter the basic wage or to legislate on hours.” That was the Commonwealth view before the High Court’s judgment, but now Mr. Chifley will be able to use this judgment to ram it home.

Unpalatable as it will be for them, the delegates will have to accept tne Commonwealth view that there is no alternative to the Court on hours ana wages, adds the correspondent. Labour’s traditional approach to defence is likely to be altered. It is reported that the Government’s military advisers favour compulsory training, and the conference is also expected to favour it. The narrow margin by which Australia escaped invasion is believed to have changed the ideas or even old diehards in the Labour movement. It is considered certain that Australians in future will have to accept a permanent tax burden for defence that before the war would have been thought impossible. Delegates are stated to take the view that political labour must not become isolated from industrial labour, ana that Ministers must keep in touch witn rank-and-file opinion. Other motions on the agenda include the following: That the Federal Government legislate immediately to provide a compulsory secret ballot in union elections and all industrial disputes, that the Federal Government bring under national control and ownership all land transport, coal, power, steel and banking, that an all-State committee investigate the possibility of providing a chain of Labour daily newspapers in every State, and that the Government manufacture radio sets and refrigerators with such economy as to meet a policy of a telephone, a radio and a refrigerator in every home.