LABOUR CONFERENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19966, 7 June 1928, Page 10

LABOUR CONFERENCE.

CONDITIONS IN AUSTRALIA. DELEGATES* TWO PICTURES. Australian and N.Z. Press Association. GENEVA. June 5.. The Australian workers' and employers' representatives at the International Labour Conference at Geneva, Mr. Walker and Mr. Sandford, were the central figures in a debate on the wages question. Mr. Walker stated tlie case for the arbitration system and Mr. Sandford condemned it. Both speakers were listened to with the greatest interest. Mr. Sandford's speech received warm commendation from the employers' group. Mr. Walker read a prepared statement, which was really a precis of the labour legislation of Australia. He painted a rosy picture on the conditions there. Mr. Sandford, in replying, said the outstanding result of arbitration had been an increase in the cost of living, which made the wages increases mere illusions, and rendered difficult competition with other countries. The Courts created class consciousness, which soon led to envy and suspicion and engendered an atmosphere inimical to the interests of the workers. Mr. Sandford scathingly criticised Mr. Waiter's beautiful picture. He said that from a distance Mr. Walker regarded all Australia as being fields of green. He forgot to mention the huge brown patches of unemployment, strikes, and losses on Government enterprises. If Mr. Walker had been able to frame his picture in a border amid full employment and with attractive balance-sheets, it might be possible to argue that the tree of compulsory arbitration had borne good fruit. Mr. Sandford quoted the Tariff Board's declaration that the industrial unions should realise the critical position into which Australia was drifting, and the •necessity to prevent the wages gap from becoming wider. Otherwise the board said it could see nothing but economic disaster ahead. He warned his hearers that it was only the prosperity of the sheep industry and of wheat production which rendered possible the venturesome legislate experiments of Australia.