The Dominion. SATURDAY, AUGUST 24, 1912. UNDER A LABOUR GOVERNMENT.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1527, 24 August 1912, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, AUGUST 24, 1912. UNDER A LABOUR GOVERNMENT.

«; ft The Australian jiublic will have no excuse in the future for complaining if they again mako the experiment of a Labour-Socialist Government. The Federal Government and the Government of New South Wales have hardly left anything undone to demonstrate, just what Labour bossism can be capable of when placed charge of State or national affairs. During the current month there has been fully exposed by the Melbourne Argus an outrageous, if not unamusing, scandal'in which the Federal Ministry shows up in a very bad light. The story is an interesting one, and is easy of summary; and tilt; undisputed facts are a quite sufficient commentary upon the sort of mind that the Australian Labour bosses bring to bear on the duties of administration. As the repulfc of a covrenpoad.ent,'» letter , the Argus sent a reporter to investigate

the manner in which some, gangs of day-labourers, employed by the Federal Government, were laying underground telegraph and telephone wires. Ho supplied an entertaining picture of the most extreme form of '. loa( l n g" that it is possible to imagine. The men spent the greater part of, their time chatting, restinjr smoking, strolling dowu town or discussing the state of the nation in the hotels nearest to. the job. As too result of furtner investigation, some remarkable facts were brought to light. ° In the first place the men are for V,)V" OS * nominees of Labour Ju.l. s. The inspectors of the works nave no power in recommending employees- a note from a Labour member of Parliament is sufficient to secure a man a job. The Argus found that tor somo time tho inspectors bad been complaining to tho Department concerning the inefficiency, laziness, insubordination, and drunkenness of many of the. men, but that their reports werq cither ignored or treated as impertinences. Navvies who excavated less than a yard of soil in a- day, bricklayers who laid onesixth ■ tho normal number of bricks per day, navvies refusing to work because other navvies complained of the rain, navvies who would go away and get drunk—these were tho subjec A .g of official complaints by the inspectors, but Ministers, inspired both by their democratic feelings and by their knowledge that these loafers were their masters, did nothing whatever. One man, who wrote to the Prime Minister as "Dear Comrade, and-signed himself "Fraternally yours," put his coat on one day and paid a call on Mr. Fisher. Later in tho day he returned to work so drunk that he fell into the trench. Complaint was made, but the man was not discharged. The waste of money under such a strange system has been enormous; on one contract, for example, it cost £1000 to put only £91 worth of material underground. Confident in their status as "comrades" of the Ministers, and masters of them through their unions, the men havo done very much as they havo pleased. This is only ono side, or one half, of. the story. The revelations in the Argus were at last mentioned in Parliament, and the Minister fdr Home Affairs merely replied that ; the statements were false, and "manufactured on Chinese evidence," and on a subsequent occasion he declared that the Argus was in a state of _ spiritual lunacy" and was suffering from "Chinese leprosy." When a Minister contents himself with wild abuse of this kind, there is good reason, as We know in New Zealand, to conclude that the case against him is worth pressing. It was pressed hard by the Opposition, but Ministers, sought to ride off on the high horse of contempt for mere newspaper reports. The subject was discussed for some days in the House, and it at last became apparent that the reports referred to by the Argus had been sent in, but not to Mr. O'Malley's Department. When it became clear that tho scandalous condition on the works oould no longer be hushed up, or full inquiry burked, the acting-Postmastcr-Genoral confessed that he had ordered an investigation immediately after the article was published in the newspaper. That he. and his colleagues had for days been ridiculing the idea that an inquiry should be held is evidenco of their anxiety to avoid what they knew to bo their duty. But the Government refused to publish the reports which had been asked for by the Argus, although it had ceased to deny that those reports were made. Nobody will suppose that the average trade unionist in New Zealand is less likely than the next man to feel heartily disgusted with the way in which Federal Ministers make the interests of the public, their own duty, and tho demands of honesty and_ candour, subservient to their anxiety to truckle to the unionist navvies.- Nor is hatred of the policy of 'spoils to the victors," such as has been adopted by, Federal Min-isters,-confined to any section or class in any community; excepting the dishonest and unscrupulous, all men hate it. At the same time it is a fact of importance that that policy, in its most objectionable form, should be forced upon a Labour Government in a large country like Australia. Trade union bossism, as it exists in Australia, presupposes a low morality in Australian trade unionism, of course, but it is difficult to believe that tho same kind of thing would happen wherever Labour obtained the reins of government. The navvy who addresses Mr. Fisher as "comrade," and whom Mr. Kino O'Malley calls "brother," and who can force Mr. Fisher to receive him and listen to his views on his "gang" boss, is a symbol of organised political trade unionism—a symbol of that denial of discipline which is involved in the crude doctrine of "the equality of man" with which the demagogues bemuse the honest workingman.