|
From the day the war broke out the National | Parliament possessed all the powers that could be | given by the passage of the referendum.
| It possessed more. The referendum, if carried,
| set limits upon the powers of the Commonwealth
|
Because the moment the nation entered the arena | of international strife, it commenced a struggle | for its existence, a struggle in which the Law of | Self-Preservation became the supreme law.
|To act in accordance with this law is to do all | things deemed essential to the safety of the | nation. The responsibility rests upon the | Government of the day. It must take its chance | that what it does and what it declines to do meets | with the approbation of the people whose destiny | has been entrusted to its care.
|This Law of Self-Preservation and all | legislation, regulations, and deeds flowing from | it, are as much a part of the Commonwealth | Constitution as if they were a written section. | They are powers exercisable in times of war, but | not in times of peace.
|Thus it is that the Fisher Government has done | and is doing many things that it could not do in | normal times. Its "Contracts Annulment" and War | Precaution Bills are cases in point. Under the | regulations of the last named, it has established | a Criminal Code of its own, with power to add. | Under these regulations everything is a crime | which the Government sees fit to make a crime, but | it has not seen fit to bring the Wheat Ring or the | Meat Trust or any other gang of food conspirators | within the code.
|RICH v. POOR
|It has made it a crime to say anything or do | anything which "tends to create disaffection | amongst His Majesty's subjects," but it has not | applied it to the men who combine to rob and ruin | the people.
|It has applied the code to poor men. It has | incarcerated them without trial. It has punished | men without letting them know who are their | accusers or what the accusation; but it has not | applied it to the spoilers who daily manipulate | the markets and raise the price of fish and meat | and wheat and tea to the women and children of men | who are giving their lives upon the | battlefield.
|Men of British birth and extraction are in | military prisons for alleged "disloyal" | utterances. They have had no chance to explain, to | defend, or recant. They have been secretly | denounced, secretly condemned; but these processes | are not applied to the scoundrels who rob the poor | in the hour of a nation's need. These men walk | abroad in raiment and fine linen, and a Labor | Government can find a myriad excuses for not | laying its hands upon them.
|The Government has had, from the commencement | of the war, ample power to do everything needful | to protect the people against the wealthy, | traitorous robbers on this continent.
|It has persistently declined to take action, | and has sheltered itself behind the pretext that | it has no power.
|It construes whatever it wishes into an Act | "tending to create disaffection amongst His | Majesty's subjects," but it refuses to construe | the starvation of families by doubling the price | of products into an Act "tending to create | disaffection." So the robbers roll down in their | motor cars and cheer for the Government and the | flag that permits them to pursue their | depredations undisturbed.
|UNLIMITED POWER>
| It is an unquestionable fact
From the day the war started the Government had | power to establish itself as the sole buyer of | cattle, sending all that has been sent to the | armies in the field, all that has been required to | the army in local training, selling to the | civilian population all it needed, and nobody | suffering except the traitorous meat trust and | middlemen who bleed the nation in the hour of that | nation's deadly struggle for existence.
| What is true of meat is true of sugar
|
From the outbreak of war we could have imported
| shiploads of fodder and wheat from India,
| Argentina and the Pacific Slope. We could have
| kept down the price of all things in which fodder
| enters as an article of cost. We could have kept
| down the price of bread and of all commodities
| into which flour enters as an item of manufacture.
| The Fisher Government, sheltering itself behind
| the pretext that it could do nothing
PRETEXTS AND PRETENDERS
|As far back as September last, just after the | elections and before Parliament had actually met, | we urged in the
And if anyone spoke of action in directions
| where power was unlimited, unquestioned, and
| existent apart from the powers of war, the answer
| came back
And this policy of nothing was so evidently the
| policy of the Government that as early as last
| October we wrote in these columns these words
|
|
Today it is an admitted fact that the cry of
| "We have no power" was and is a deception and a
| lie, and because of that deception and that lie a
| great party has been doomed to the inactivity of a
| stone image. The men who have raised protestant
| voices have been damned as idiots and fanatics.
| Today it is the men who fostered deception; who
| made it the cover for their timidity; who by
| reason of their influence reduced a great party to
| impotence
THEN AND NOW
|For months a very small minority have been like | a voice crying in the wilderness. Today it is an | admitted fact that we have power to buy anything, | sell anything, do anything. Today it is admitted | that it would be a bold man who would dare to set | limits upon the powers of the Commonwealth during | the progress of this war.
| Today we hear Joseph Cook yelling
|
|
Then we get this
|
Of course, they could stop it, but they won't. | And all this time the Opposition has sat quietly | on its haunches, watching this spectacle of the | most powerful political Labor party that the world | has seen tied to the post of stagnation by | agencies that have yet to be examined.
|Men of the Labor movement! The Labor party in | Parliament has for nine long months stood at the | door of glorious opportunity. It is afraid to | enter. It refuses to move. It fears to float its | fortunes on the sea of chance. It is more timid | than the timid. It is more Tory than the Tory.
|It is not prepared to put into practice those | principles, by the promulgation of which the party | has grown and attained power.
|And when an organism ceases to function for the | purposes for which it was created it commences to | rot.
|What a miserable spectacle is this of a great | Labor party told what it can do by the legal | authorities of the Opposition, and jibed at by its | political enemies as a party afraid to do it, | afraid to live up to its principles, afraid to put | them to the test of practice.
|The Labor party in Parliament can only redeem | itself from odium and contempt, can only win back | its self-respect and the fear of its enemies by | immediately putting into practice the principles | of which it talks.
| And it is the duty of organised labor on this
| continent to demand immediate action
|
Now is the hour of a nation's trouble. Now is | the hour to put our principles to the test, if we | have faith in their power to save.
|FRANK ANSTEY