COSTLY LAWS

Taranaki Daily News, 15 August 1931, Page 16

COSTLY LAWS

AUSTRALIA’S BIC- BURDEN.

THE FORTY-FOUR HOUR WEEK.

Announcing the policy of the Employers’ Federation of New South Wales at a big conference of group leaders of the Riverina movement at Wagga recently, the secretary, Mr. W. R. Schwiik,. said that all compulsory industrial arbi- ‘ tration, Federal and State, should be removed and replaced by voluntary agreements between the employers and the employees. a The country and industries had been sacrificed through the incidence of the rigid and destroying principle of compulsory wages, said Mr. Sehwilk, and were now crying urgently for relief. The introduction of the '44-hour week had caused a loss to New South Wales of at least £49,000,D00 to £50,000,000, without considering the impossibility of regaining nearly two years’ lost time.. The price the State had paid under a false living wage was £15,000,000, with an additional amount of £10,000,000 annually for the 44-hour week.

The conference affirmed that the control of industrial legislative powers should be vested in a provincial Government. It also decided that it was desirable that in the administration of industrial laws the principle of voluntary contracts should be preserved. Following an address by Mr. R. Windeyer, K.C., the conference adopted resolutions expressing the view that there should be a Federal judiciary for the whole of Australia, divided into an appellate court and a court of first instance, the judiciary: to administer the whole body of Federal and provincial laws in the superior court: the only other judiciary officers to be a. magistrate, with a limited jurisdiction, but enlarged above the present scope, administering the Fedeiul and provincial laws in the several provinces in inferior courts. It was agreed that there should be provincial police forces, charged with enforcing the whole body of the law, and a central Federal organisation, analogous to Scotland Yard, co-operating with the provincial police; also that the administration of the criminal law should be entrusted to the Commonwealth.