lled all Bruce's speeches in favor of arbitration. How he would never give it up. How Latham had defended it. p> Bruce had appointed a royal commission to inquire into the constitution. It had not yet finished its work. Yet the government was going ahead without waiting for the report. p> Theodore said Bruce was the prophet of doom. Whenever an anti-Labor leader wanted to take away reforms, or reduce wages, he invariably tried to justify himself with doleful prophecies. Even Sir Robert Gibson, chairman of the Commonwealth Bank, had said things were not as bad as they were being represented. The stock exchange was still buoyant. To Theodore that was most important. Bruce was imagining the difficulties. The stock exchange quotations were at their highest level in 20 years. The banks were making record profits. So how could there be a depression? p> The attorney-general, Mr Latham, tried hard to defend the proposition. As usual, he was academic. Latham argued from a legalistic brief. He had no time for political rhetoric. He tried to rely on logic. But he was arguing against his own previous convictions. He tried to rationalise the problem. He went back over the dry legal tomes dealing with the development of industrial law in Australia: the Harvester judgment, the engineers 'case. They were all given full treatment. He was on the defensive. He referred to the strikes of the marine stewards, led by Bob Heffron, the engineers, the waterside workers and the timber workers. p> But he made no mention of the lockout of the miners. He said the unions had campaigned against arbitration. Senator Arthur Rae had written a book, The Curse of Arbitration. The ARU had rejected arbitration. Yet, at other times, the government was attacking those against arbitration as red-raggers and extremists. p> Then Latham gave the show away. He referred to the action of my government in passing the 44-Hour Week in 1926. He said that if the timber workers had been deregistered in the Federal Court they would have obtained a 44-hour week under a state award. The government was clearing the way for Mr Bavin to bring in a 48-hour week again in New South Wales. p> At that time there were only 88 federal awards in force in NSW as against 455 state awards. Once the state government had sole control of industrial matters, Mr Bavin could impose whatever industrial conditions were wanted by the Nationalist Consultative Council. p> Latham rejected a suggestion by Curtin that the men could elect their own representatives to the Industrial Boards for the maritime industries. Frank Brennan said the proposal was begotten out of a craven spirit by cynicism. Bruce had given the impression that he knew little or nothing about the subject, while Latham had given the impression that he knew all about it but wanted to keep it dark. p> They had appointed their own judges at bigger and better salaries, with bigger pensions and tenure for life. Now there was to be a dismal procession of self-confessed failures going back on their tracks. p> Labor members like Norman Makin, J.B. Chifley, George Martens and Ted Riley Sen, who had practised in the industrial courts as advocates, trotted out all the achievements of arbitration. They were more legal than the lawyers. They cited the Commonwealth Law Report. They talked about common rule, and gave forth with lengthy extracts from various judgments. It was almost as if they were being deprived of their professional status. p> Bruce's chief defender from New South Wales was Archdale Parkhill, who had been Hughes 'chief propagandist when the Nationalist Party was first formed. He later went into the federal Parliament as member for Warringah. He said that when he was speaking on one street corner in Mosman, Theodore had been on another supporting the AWU candidate. Parkhill said that Theodore had said: "Mr Lang must be disciplined ruthlessly, with the gloves off. "An interjector had retorted, "Your number is up for Dalley," and Theodore had replied, "There will be no shrinking on my part. "Yet, said Parkhill, a few months later Theodore was licking Lang's hand. Parkhill didn't like me. In that respect I was second only to Jock Garden in his hate list. p> 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!" p> Mann replied they had. If the House rejected the Bruce Bill, the government would be...
