FORCED THROUGH

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19787, 10 March 1927, Page 2

FORCED THROUGH

BASIC WAGE BILL MR LANG’S LATEST. SEVERE CRITICISM FROM OPPOSITION. SYDNEY, March 8. In the Assembly, as an urgency measure, the .Government carried through all its stages a Bill instructing the Industrial Commissioner (Mr Piddington) to declare a living wage based on a standard sufficient, to maintain a man, his wife, and two children under the age of fourteen years. Mr B. T. Bevan (Leader of the Opposition) in protesting against rushing tho Bill through without discussion, declared that the Government presented the most pitiable spectacle of floundering incapacity ever seen in the House. It did not know from hour to hoqr what its policy would be. Tn moving the second reading, the Hon. J. M. Baddeley said that the Bill was intended to meet the position created by the Legislative Council sending the Family Endowment Bill to a Select Committee, the definite purpose of which, he claimed, was the shelving of the measure. He contended that the New South Wales basic wage was the lowest in the Commonwealth. Mr Bavin offered that if the Government would drop the Bill he would assist them to pass a more liberal measure of child endowment than that which had been proposed, and one which would not place a single additional burden on the employers. If the was passed employers would make provision for 500,000 children who did not exist, while the children of families numbering more than two children were left unprovided for. The gag was applied to shorten the debate.