NEW PROVINCE MOVEMENT GROWS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 63, 16 March 1931, Page 1

NEW PROVINCE MOVEMENT GROWS.

THE GAGE OF BATTLE TO INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM. SYDNEY, March 15. A meeting of two hundred delegates at Wagga confirmed the policy of the Riverina leaders advocating the abolition of State Parliaments and the substitution of provincial councils with wide local governing powers under one Australian Parliament. Mr Charles Hardy, leader of the movement, said that the proposed provinces w’ould have sovereign rights within their own borders* each being responsible for its own development, free from outside interference. The plan supports a Federal basic wage, but insists on the rights of the provinces to make their own industrial awards. “ We are throwing down the gage of battle to industrial unionism,” declared Mr Hardy, “ not because we oppose unionism, but because it can be a menace or a benefit, and to-day it is a definite menace.” * Each province, he said, would possess a constitution unalterable except by the will of the people, whose claim above all was the right of self-deter-mination in their own affairs. The police watched the proceedings and took official shorthand notes of what was said.