NATIONAL SERVICE REGULATIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24825, 27 January 1942, Page 4

NATIONAL SERVICE REGULATIONS

New Zealand had its first experience yesterday of the operation of the most drastic law ever enforced in its history affecting the utilisation by the individual of his labourpower. Under the terms of this law a person may, in certain circumstances, be forbidden to leave the service in which he is employed or may be ordered to return to a service which he has left. It is a law that was not passed by Parliament. It is one which the Government, acting under the authority that may be exercised by it under conditions of emergency, has brought into force by regulation. In a time of war the Government, even though it be the Government in a democracy, is invested with very wide powers. Among them is that of the initiation of fresh legislation by regulation. It is a power which has to be exercised with discretion. Particularly is this the case when the effect of the law is to curtail seriously the liberty of the subject, as the law that was applied yesterday for the first time unquestionably does. The principle of this law is that the interest of the individual citizen is, and must be, subordinate in exceptional degree to the interests of the State. There are certain industries in the country that are officially declared to be industries of which tiie existence is essential to the maintenance of a supply of commodities or services. In such industries the discontinuance of work by an employee or the reduction by an employee of his normal output is an offence against the law. There is a clear reason why the wilful and wanton interruption of work in an essential industry in circumstances such as now prevail is not only undesirable but is indefensible. We might hesitate, even in time of war, to describe an industrial strike in city abattoirs as “ simply treason,” as the Prime Minister has described it, but there should be no public sympathy with those who took part last week in such a strike at Auckland. Mr

Fraser sought ,to soften the blow administered to them in their being ordered back to work by suggesting that they might have had “ legitimate grounds for complaint ” and at the same time paid court to them as “ reasonable men of goodwill.” For their part they cannot have forgotten that the Government had exhibited a deplorable feebleness on many occasions in the past on which its authority had been challenged by parties of workers in different industries. They may, therefore, well have believed that they did not incur the risk of any penalty by acting as they did. When they realised that in their case the Government was prepared to enforce the regulation they took the only decision that was open to them and returned to work yesterday morning. It may afford them satisfaction to know that the Minister of Labour has expressed his delight at their having obeyed the order which they had received. It was precisely the sort of fatuous statement that the Minister would make..