In particular, Mr. Bruce thought the workers should accept the piecework system and payment by results. They would then earn enough to keep their families. Of course, there would need to be safeguards.

"At present Australian industries are passing through a serious economic crisis. Tens of thousands of our workmen are unemployed. It is essential, therefore, that we should all recognise the urgency of improving the relations between employers and employees," he said.

He also wanted equality in competition between the states. "Has any more fatal blow been struck at equality in interstate competition than the 44-hour week and child endowment legislation of the last Labor government New South Wales," asked Bruce, again trotting me out as his King Charles' head. But he still had no idea of the political hurricane building up. He was not left long in suspense.

Of course, Bruce knew that he had enemies. The enemies within his party were more dangerous than any on the Labor side. Chief of them was the irrepressible William Morris Hughes, who had founded the Nationalist Party. There were times when he believed that he had founded the Labor Party. That, of course, was historical licence. But there was no doubt about him being expelled from the Labor Party. There was also no doubt that he founded the Nationalist Party after the conscription break. He even hand-picked his own executive.

But his break with Bruce was now irretrievable. He was out to get his revenge for what he believed was the double-cross perpetrated by Bruce in 1923. He had waited patiently for almost seven years. Now it seemed as if might get his opportunity. But Bruce got in the first blow. He expelled Hughes from the Nationalist Party. With him went E.A. Mann, a caustic critic of the government, who was Nationalist member for Perth.

The Labor member for East Sydney, Jack West, raised the matter in House when he asked whether Hughes and Mann were to be barred from certain rooms and, if so, for how long. Bruce tartly replied that if he wanted know whether it was true that Hughes and Mann would not in future be invited to attend meetings of government supporters, the answer was in the affirmative. In short, they had been expelled from the Parliamentary Nationalist Party.

Riley Senior then asked Bruce whether the Nationalist Party had blown out its brains. Bruce said the suggestion was completely unwarranted. Frank Brennan followed by directing the attention of the Speaker to the fact that P.G. Stewart, Country member for Wimmera, had withdrawn his allegiance to the government, that the member for Wannon, A.S. Rodgers, had retreated to a private room in the basement of Parliament House, and now Mann would need a room, while even W.M. Hughes had been turned out of his own house. He wanted to know what steps the Speaker intended to take to accommodate all the segments of the government that were breaking off. Latham suggested they could all find refuge in the Labor Opposition rooms.

Bruce still had the numbers if he could hold the rest of his party together. His proposal was not getting the newspaper support he had anticipated.

Theodore, in the absence of Scullin, led the attack for the Labor opposition. He said at the caprice of one man, and without warning, the Bill had been flung on to the table of the House. One man was about to undo the work of generations. It was a wrecker's policy. He recalled all Bruce's speeches in favor of arbitration. How he would never give it up. How Latham had defended it.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!"

Mann replied they had. If the House rejected the Bruce Bill, the government would be politically executed.

In his budget Page had opened with a note of cheerfulness, with what was the triumph of hope over experience. Next day the Prime Minister had reversed the picture. Yet Bruce had described people who had issued similar warnings as Jeremiahs and croaking pessimists. Now he was saying, "We are in a bad way. We can't carry on." Now he said the only way was to reduce the cost of production. By that he meant reducing wages. Mann said the government was helping the Communists, who also attacked arbitration.

Bert Lazzarini quoted an interview given by Bavin to the Sydney Morning Herald, which indicated that he also proposed to scrap the existing system of arbitration. He proposed to follow the Bruce model.

Then another prominent member of the Government side took the floor against the measure. He was G.A. Maxwell, K.C., member for the blue-ribbon Nationalist seat of Fawkner in Victoria. He said that Bruce had said that the Bill should be considered on non-party lines. He proposed to accept the invitation. He refused to be branded a rebel or a traitor. He proposed to exercise his own judgment on a matter of grave national importance. The government had no mandate. It was against the Nationalist Party program. The party had not been consulted. He refused to be bound by the Prime Minister's whim. His electors had returned him believing he supported arbitration. The first he knew of the volte face was the receipt of the Prime Minister's urgent telegram. He had reserved his opinion until he had heard the Prime Minister's defence. Having heard, he was satisfied that he had not made out a case. Instead of providing one supreme authority in industrial matters, the government was creating six -the state tribunals.

Maxwell was a brilliant lawyer. He dissected the measure. He exposed the weaknesses of the government's arguments. He described it as the negation of every principle for which the Prime Minister was supposed to stand. In particular, he stripped Latham's case of all its supports. He even had a dig at the moral and spiritual aspects of the matter. With regret, but without misgiving, he proposed to vote against the measure.

On Thursday, September 5, the debate was resumed in a sitting that was to last until 12.30pm on the following Saturday. For two days and nights the Bill was torn to shreds.

W.M. Hughes took up the attack. He said that it was without parallel in Commonwealth legislation. For 25 years they had advanced towards their goal. Every party had wanted more power. Now the Bruce government had sounded the trumpet for a general and shameful retreat. The temple of industrial arbitration was to be torn down. Not one stone was to be left standing. Bruce's speech was full of sophisms, irrelevancies and platitudes. Latham had made a pretence of logic but had followed his leader. After being in recess for six months, the government now said they had to day and night to get the bill through. Delay would be fatal. Had some at financial cataclysm occurred?

Bruce had accepted a portfolio in his ministry knowing that arbitration was part of its policy. When Bruce became Prime Minister he took the policy with him. He had gone to the people for a mandate to enforce the industrial law. He had obtained his mandate. Now he said that compulsory arbitration was wrong, penalties were barbarous and all courts and tribunals must go. Yesterday he was the protagonist of penalties. Today he preaches the gospel brotherly love. The parties are to turn the other cheek, penalties are to be kept away. The system is as it was 10 years ago. It is the Prime Minister who has changed. He says he believes in a high standard of living, but the cost of production must come down. So he proposes to abolish the courts that have been the guardians of the economic and industrial welfare of the people and the only barrier between them and chaos.

"What would happen if the parties didn't agree?" asked Hughes. The framers of the constitution had placed arbitration in the constitution just after the greatest industrial conflagration the country had ever seen, and while its embers were still warm. Those men had seen the "print of the nails," they had thrust their fingers into the wound. He was reminded of the limerick:

There was a young lady of Riga

Who went for a ride on the tiger

They came back from the ride

With the lady inside

And a smile on the face of the tiger

That would be the position of the workers. If the price of meat came down would not the graziers suffer? If the price of bread was reduced, would not the farmers get less for their wheat? Mercilessly Hughes stripped Bruce down to his very spats. Bruce was a dilettante, said Hughes. He had made one attempt to amend the constitution but had walked out leaving the job to Latham. He had been recreant to his trust. He had betrayed the people. He had insulted their intelligence. He had affronted their sense of decency. "He is the creature of a day. What he does today, another can undo tomorrow." The Bill was an attempt to save his face so that he would not be eternally confronted with the ghost of the hideous blunder he had made when he had withdrawn the prosecution of John Brown.

Frank Anstey quickly tangled with his old adversary, Dr Page. He said that the treasurer had lifted the debate to the lofty eminence of the sewer. "Far better it is to be ignorant than to be cultured, educated, talented and to sell one's talents for the first mess of pottage that offers," said Anstey, attacking Hughes' former colleagues in the ministry who had betrayed him for Bruce.

P.G. Stewart was another to declare himself against his former leader. He said while the mines were still closed, the women were starving, John Brown still could be seen at Randwick with his field glasses slung over his shoulder.

Hughes: "John Brown's body lies a-moulderin' is the grave but his soul goes marching on."

Stewart said members of the government had referred to trade unions as "basher gangs", "a seething mass of maggots", "running sores", and "fangless snakes." He would leave them with such nauseous expressions. He would oppose the Bill.

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