PREFERENCE TO SOLDIERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25814, 9 April 1945, Page 2

PREFERENCE TO SOLDIERS

AUSTRALIAN PROPOSALS GOVERNMENT’S DILEMMA (N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent) SYDNEY. Apl. 5. For contrary reasons, both State Labour and ex-servicemen's organisations are opposing the Curtin Government’s projected soldier preference legislation. Industrial Labour spokesmen declare that the preference clauses of the Soldiers’ Re-establish-ment and Employment Bill will penalise a large section of essential war workers who were prevented from enlisting and are unnecessary if the Government honours its pledge of postwar “ work for all.” Now the ex-servicemen's organisations are demanding the withdrawal of the Bill as inadequate and its replacement. by a measure giving absolute preference to returned men. Thus the Re-establishment Bill to come before the Federal Parliament again this month is likely to become a serious embarrassment to the Government. Pressure one way from within the Labour Party and the exactly opposite way from outside it poses the Government with a serious dilemma. The latest ranging shots in the rising soldiers’ re-establishment war were fired at a meeting of the New South Wales Council of the Returned Soldiers’ League, where the honorary legal adviser, Mr Vincent Brady, declared that the preference clauses would prove “ abortive and ineffective ” and that any employer could " drive a horse and cart ” throughout the proposed Act, If the Bill were passed employers would have to compare ex-servicemen’s qualifications with those of other applicants for a job. Such an “other things being equal” clause would enable employers to choose anyone they wanted.

"The Bill is a smokebomb to blind ex-servicemen and women by a phoney attempt to give some semblance of preference,” said another council member. “We must no longer appease, but must dictate to the politicians. There are 800,000 servicemen behind us and treble that number of their dependents. All of us must come out and fight.” The resolution of the council said: “We repudiate the alleged preference clauses of the proposed Act and demand that absolute preference, without danger of evasion, be substituted.”

The Victorian Labour Party conference last week instructed the Federal Labour member from that State to oppose implementation of the Bill, and a similar stand is expected to uo taken by the New South Wales Labour Party in June.

In spite of this internal opposition, the Prime Minister. Mr J. Curtin, and his party followers are almost certain to Lrco the parliamentary passage of the proposed preference legislation. But the seeds of serious dissatisfaction have been irrevocably sown—and the Government may reap the eventual whirlwind of trouble from sources beth inside and outside the Labour Party.