Реферат: Stanley Bruce's great industrial relation blunder
Then E.A. Mann, Nationalist member for Perth, entered the lists
against Bruce. He started off delightfully by recalling Greek customs:
"A quaint local custom of one of the old Greek states was
that anyone desiring to bring into the state a new law should appear before an assembly
of the citizens to propound that law with a halter round his neck, so that should
the law not meet with the approval of the assembly, or not be considered necessary
for the requirements of the state, the halter might properly be used to strangle
him."
W.M. Hughes: "Oh, that those days might come back again!"
Mann replied they had. If the House rejected the Bruce Bill,
the government would be politically executed.
In his budget Page had opened with a note of cheerfulness, with
what was the triumph of hope over experience. Next day the Prime Minister had reversed
the picture. Yet Bruce had described people who had issued similar warnings as
Jeremiahs and croaking pessimists. Now he was saying, "We are in a bad way.
We can't carry on." Now he said the only way was to reduce the cost of production.
By that he meant reducing wages. Mann said the government was helping the Communists,
who also attacked arbitration.
Bert Lazzarini quoted an interview given by Bavin to the Sydney
Morning Herald, which indicated that he also proposed to scrap the existing
system of arbitration. He proposed to follow the Bruce model.
Then another prominent member of the Government side took the
floor against the measure. He was G.A. Maxwell, K.C., member for the blue-ribbon
Nationalist seat of Fawkner in Victoria. He said that Bruce had said that the Bill
should be considered on non-party lines. He proposed to accept the invitation.
He refused to be branded a rebel or a traitor. He proposed to exercise his own
judgment on a matter of grave national importance. The government had no mandate.
It was against the Nationalist Party program. The party had not been consulted.
He refused to be bound by the Prime Minister's whim. His electors had returned
him believing he supported arbitration. The first he knew of the volte face was
the receipt of the Prime Minister's urgent telegram. He had reserved his opinion
until he had heard the Prime Minister's defence. Having heard, he was satisfied
that he had not made out a case. Instead of providing one supreme authority in industrial
matters, the government was creating six –the state tribunals.
Maxwell was a brilliant lawyer. He dissected the measure. He exposed
the weaknesses of the government's arguments. He described it as the negation of
every principle for which the Prime Minister was supposed to stand. In particular,
he stripped Latham's case of all its supports. He even had a dig at the moral and
spiritual aspects of the matter. With regret, but without misgiving, he proposed
to vote against the measure.
On Thursday, September 5, the debate was resumed in a sitting
that was to last until 12.30pm on the following Saturday. For two days and nights
the Bill was torn to shreds.
W.M. Hughes took up the attack. He said that it was without parallel
in Commonwealth legislation. For 25 years they had advanced towards their goal.
Every party had wanted more power. Now the Bruce government had sounded the trumpet
for a general and shameful retreat. The temple of industrial arbitration was to
be torn down. Not one stone was to be left standing. Bruce's speech was full of
sophisms, irrelevancies and platitudes. Latham had made a pretence of logic but
had followed his leader. After being in recess for six months, the government now
said they had to day and night to get the bill through. Delay would be fatal. Had
some at financial cataclysm occurred?
Bruce had accepted a portfolio in his ministry knowing that arbitration
was part of its policy. When Bruce became Prime Minister he took the policy with
him. He had gone to the people for a mandate to enforce the industrial law. He
had obtained his mandate. Now he said that compulsory arbitration was wrong, penalties
were barbarous and all courts and tribunals must go. Yesterday he was the protagonist
of penalties. Today he preaches the gospel brotherly love. The parties are to turn
the other cheek, penalties are to be kept away. The system is as it was 10 years
ago. It is the Prime Minister who has changed. He says he believes in a high standard
of living, but the cost of production must come down. So he proposes to abolish
the courts that have been the guardians of the economic and industrial welfare of
the people and the only barrier between them and chaos.
"What would happen if the parties didn't agree?" asked
Hughes. The framers of the constitution had placed arbitration in the constitution
just after the greatest industrial conflagration the country had ever seen, and
while its embers were still warm. Those men had seen the "print of the nails,"
they had thrust their fingers into the wound. He was reminded of the limerick:
There was a young lady of Riga
Who went for a ride on the tiger
They came back from the ride
With the lady inside
And a smile on the face of the tiger
That would be the position of the workers. If the price of meat
came down would not the graziers suffer? If the price of bread was reduced, would
not the farmers get less for their wheat? Mercilessly Hughes stripped Bruce down
to his very spats. Bruce was a dilettante, said Hughes. He had made one attempt
to amend the constitution but had walked out leaving the job to Latham. He had
been recreant to his trust. He had betrayed the people. He had insulted their intelligence.
He had affronted their sense of decency. "He is the creature of a day. What
he does today, another can undo tomorrow." The Bill was an attempt to save
his face so that he would not be eternally confronted with the ghost of the hideous
blunder he had made when he had withdrawn the prosecution of John Brown.
Frank Anstey quickly tangled with his old adversary, Dr Page.
He said that the treasurer had lifted the debate to the lofty eminence of the sewer.
"Far better it is to be ignorant than to be cultured, educated, talented and
to sell one's talents for the first mess of pottage that offers," said Anstey,
attacking Hughes' former colleagues in the ministry who had betrayed him for Bruce.
P.G. Stewart was another to declare himself against his former
leader. He said while the mines were still closed, the women were starving, John
Brown still could be seen at Randwick with his field glasses slung over his shoulder.
Hughes: "John Brown's body lies a-moulderin' is the grave
but his soul goes marching on."
Stewart said members of the government had referred to trade unions
as "basher gangs", "a seething mass of maggots", "running
sores", and "fangless snakes." He would leave them with such nauseous
expressions. He would oppose the Bill.
Bruce, in reply, showed how deeply he had been nettled by Hughes.
He referred to his "sinister suggestions, poisonous and offensive charges".
At one stage in Bruce's reply, Hughes interjected "Hear, hear." The Speaker
called him to order. Hughes naively wanted to know how he had offended. He was
told that it was the tone in which he had uttered it that was offensive. Billy
repeated "Hear, hear." Bruce admitted it was contrary to his party's
platform with Hughes interjecting. "L'etat, c'est moi." Bruce again
repeated that the depression was not temporary and was due to a fundamental defect.
The second reading passed by 34 to 30 with W.M. Hughes, E.A.
Mann, G.A. Maxwell and P.G. Stewart voting with the opposition.
But the fight was not yet over. When the Parliament adjourned
on Saturday afternoon, it still had no idea of the events ahead.
At the weekend members returned to their homes believing that
the crisis was just about over. But Bruce was still very worried. He fully realised
that the fight was entering the critical round.
Although arbitration was the issue before Parliament, outside
there was raging a new political tornado. In the Parliament it was kept severely
in the background. But in every city and in every bush town the people were experiencing
the full impact of the best organised political pressure campaign in the history
of the Commonwealth.
The movie interests had declared war on the Bruce government.
The talkie age had just arrived. Like their own product the movie people had switched
from the old silents to full-blast talkies on the political front. But the bad
men were not the villains of the Hollywood sets. They were in Canberra.
Stanley Melbourne Bruce and Dr. Earle Page were being depicted
as trying to foreclose on the mortgage of the old movie homestead. They were
trying to rob the poor widows and orphans of the movie moguls. They were the vampires
sucking the blood out of the innocent film distributors' bodies. It all arose out
of a very small mention in Dr Page's Budget speech. After explaining that there
was a heavy Commonwealth deficit, he announced that the Government had decided
to increase taxes. Income tax was to be increased by £10 millions. In addition
it was proposed to levy an Amusements Tax.
Page proposed a tax of 5 per cent., or 1/- in the pound, on
the total receipts for admissions to all entertainments. "This tax will be
a levy upon a national luxury, which, it is considered should make a special contribution
in the present circumstances." In those days it was still possible to obtain
admission to a film theatre for a shilling. To suggest that those indulging themselves
to that extent were plunging into wanton extravagance was hardly good politics.
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