“Sydney Morning Herald" 19th January 1942.

THE INDUSTRIAL FRONT
Sharp Action Necessary
HARD FACTS AND SOFT HEADS

By Our Canberra Correspondent (Ross Gollan)

Events are confirming senior Federal Ministers in the conviction that nothing, not even party shibboleths or their own political futures (which, in any case, will cease to exist if Japan be not defeated) can stand against the need for uninterrupted war production.

Even from the necessarily coercive coal productions regulations of the previous weekend, it was a long and – for a Labour Prime Minister – an especially bitter step to Mr Curtin's blunt announcement of Saturday that, if waterside workers did not work a steamer around which an industrial dispute has developed, the Navy, under the Government's instructions, would do so.

A longer step still may have to be taken if all coal mines are not at work today. Because of a big general improvement in coal production the Government felt justified in giving the couple of mines that were on strike last week a little time for adjustment of disputes. If local coal strikes continue the regulations will have to be applied, or admitted inapplicable – an alternative which would fatally weaken the Government's chances of dealing with disputes in any industry.

OUTSPOKEN MINISTERS

In their stand against industrial wantonness War Cabinet members were heartened last week by the public support of some other Ministers. The forthrightness of the Minister for Information, Senator Ashley, to South Coast miners on Saturday probably more than made up to Mr Curtin for embarrassments by Senator Ashley's controversy with his former Director of Information, Mr Holmes. The midweek
frankness of the Minister for Labour, Mr Ward, seemed to suggest that Mr Ward, whose administrative potentialities have always been considerable, had learnt in his three and a half months as a Minister that team work was the secret of
adequate Government.

All the same, the week left Ministers perplexed at the continued failure of even a comparatively few unionists to grasp the fact that industrial tactics, which might have been pardonable in peace-time, are crimes against Australia, and
particularly the workers of Australia, now that Japan is making ground in a southward advance. A basic belief of Parliamentary Labour in the first two and a quarter years of the war had been that even a Japanese feint against Singapore would end all war-time Australian industrial unrest. A Labour Government has found instead that, with Japan critically menacing Singapore, and in temporarily
firm possession of areas only an aeroplane hop from Australia, some union leaders persist in the use of the strike as an industrial weapon. There was no rhetoric about the "Have you all gone mad?" with which one Minister addressed one union executive last week.

Nothing can stand against the need for uninterrupted war production.

PUBLIC COMPLACENCY

There are hints of an early intense campaign by the Government to kill the public complacency, which it feels to be the root cause, not only of strikes by a minority of unionists, but also of the failure of other minority sections of
the public to give that spontaneous co-operation in emergency measures which the Government had expected. Observers believe that, for such a campaign to succeed,
the Government will have to give the public some of the facts at present withheld from it, even at the risk of providing the enemy with possibly valuable information. There is not very much point in concealing some war effort weaknesses from the enemy, if the price of concealment is the surrender of
public co-operation which could rectify the weakness before the enemy's all-too- possible arrival.

The public also needs to be officially told of the inevitable weakening of the structure of the combined Allied war effort by any continuance of industrial unrest. Allies have a preference for helping those who help themselves. If
Australia pulls less than her weight in the common boat, and the war horizon further darkens allies may tell Australia that she will have to get out of the boat and sink or swim for herself – either that, or accept an inferior stature that could have the gravest post-war consequences.

MR ABBOTT'S TASK

Mr Curtin's policy of co-opting Opposition members for important war duty has got smartly under way with the allocation of Mr Abbott to the chairmanship of an
inter-Allied committee, whose work may prove most important in the preservation of Australia. Mr Abbott's capabilities were obvious from the moment he entered
Parliament in October, 1940. Observers who suspect that Mr Curtin is being given extra worry by the failure of some of his older Ministers to cope with their duties, hope that he will find other full-time jobs for other members of the
Opposition not in the War Council. Mr Spooner, for example, is a proved administrator, whose administrative talents have never yet been given a fair Federal run.

Allies have a preference for helping those who help themselves.

The battle between Canberra and Melbourne for ranking as Australia's war-time seat of government has again been joined, Melbourne, which counted the fight all but lost in December, has since acquired two new weapons. One is a claim that the reasons which make Mr Abbott's committee operate in Melbourne are just as telling in the case of War Council and War Cabinet. The other is the provision
at Victoria Barracks, Melbourne, of a reconstructed War Cabinet room, fitted with appliances guaranteed to make even Melbourne weather endurable.

OPPOSITION BENCH

Choice of Melbourne as the venue of War Council meetings last week and for the coming week is, however, taken as no precedent by those Ministers who hold that most efficient and least interrupted work can be done at Canberra; that
Canberra's role as centre for international communication is more important than Melbourne as seat of Service headquarters.

Another more secret battle may result in the Opposition rooms when Parliament finally reassembles, as a result of the personnel of the newly-appointed joint U.A.P. – U.C.P. Parliamentary executive. The executive runs to 16 members.
Former Ministers not included are Senators Foll (on the ground that he will be tied up with his expected full-time R.A.A.F. administrative duties). Leckie, and Collett, Sir Frederick Stewart, Sir Earle Page (only for the term of his absence in London), and Mr McDonald Senator Sampson, Mr Hutchinson, and Mr Francis, rank-and-filers while the coalition was in office, have been given executive work.

The battle between Canberra and Melbourne for ranking as Australia's war-time seat of government has again been joined ...

John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library. Records of John Fairfax & Sons Pty Ltd. The industrial front, 19 January 1942. JCPML00683/23