In little more than five weeks Australia will hold a
General Election, and it is certain that the dock strike, which is gradually collapsing, will colour the issues. It is an odd coincidence that Mr. Bruce fought the last General Election in 1925 on the questions provoked by a dock strike, and apparently he will have to do so again. Mr. Bruce takes the view that Labour is now challenging Parliamentary Government just as the General Strike here was a challenge to the Constitution. It is true that the strike in Australia is confined to the ports, but that sort of strike can paralyse almost all Australian trade. Compulsory arbitration has been a failure. In some sense an award can be enforced, as Mr. Bruce is proving by his emergency legislation, but the enforcement does not produce the assent without which industry is deprived of half its power. It may be that Mr. Bruce will revert to the industrial legislation which he proposed in 1925, and which was rejected at the Referendum of 1926. He then wanted industrial authority to be concentrated in the Federal Government, but this provoked the jealousy of the States.
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