BASIC WAGE.

Wairarapa Age, 9 March 1927, Page 5

BASIC WAGE.

EMERGENCY LEGISLATION IN NEW SOUTH WALES. PROTEST BY OPPOSITION. (Received Tuesday, 9.10 p.m.) SYDNEY, March 8. As a measure of urgency, the Government carried through all its stages in the Assembly, a Bill instructing the Industrial Commissioner (Mr. A. B. Fiddington) to declare a living wage based on a standard sufficient to maintain a man, his wife and two children under the age of fourteen.

Mr. Bavin (Leader of the Opposition) 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 hour what its policy would be.

Moving the second reading, Mr. Baddeley said 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. Ha contended that the New South Wales basic wage was the lowest in the Commonwealth. Mr. Bavin offered, if the Government would drop the Bill, to assist them to pass a more liberal measure of child endowment than, that which had been proposed, and which would not place a single additional burden on employers. If the present Bill passed, employers would have to make provision for half a million 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 tho debate.—(P.A.)