Part 3 (2/2)
The State then decided that it would use its credit to accelerate the construction of railways and roads and open up {120} outlying districts. Such works were valueless--in fact ruinous to the Province--unless they were followed by a strenuous and successful encouragement of settlement and cultivation. The latter task has been the princ.i.p.al work of the Seddon Government, which has attempted, not only to settle people on the land, but to settle them in suitable localities and under conditions that will give them a reasonable prospect of an independent and comfortable livelihood.
[1] ”The Colony of New Zealand,” Gisborne, p. 170.
[2] ”The Colony of New Zealand,” Gisborne, pp. 171-2.
[3] New Zealand Official Year Book, 1894. Report by Under-secretary of Public Works.
[4] Report of Department of Lands and Survey, 1896; page iv.
[5] Report of Department of Labour, 1896; page vii.
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V
_CHARACTERISTICS OF VICTORIAN LEGISLATION_
Comparisons between the Australasian Upper Houses--Conflicts between the two Houses in Victoria--The proposed obviation of deadlocks--The utility of the Legislative Council--The antagonism between Town and Country--The Factory Acts, their justification and provisions--State Socialism: Railways, Irrigation Works, the encouragement of Mining, Subsidies and Bonuses, State advances to Settlers--The Unemployed and the Leongatha Labour Colony.
The Victorian Legislative Council is, from the democratic point of view, the most objectionable of all the Australasian Upper Houses. In Queensland, New South Wales, and New Zealand, the members of the Council are nominated for life and receive no remuneration for their services; but, as their number is not restricted, their opposition to measures pa.s.sed by the a.s.sembly is limited by the dread that the Executive may exercise the power of making additional appointments. In the other Provinces the Councils are elective; in South Australia, Western Australia, and Tasmania, as in the Provinces already mentioned, the Members are {122} subject to no property qualification, and in New Zealand, South Australia, and Tasmania they are paid at the rate, respectively, of 150, 200, and 50 a year. In Victoria, on the other hand, there is a property qualification for members.h.i.+p which consists in the possession of a freehold estate of the clear annual value of 100, which confines eligibility to a small fraction of the population; and the area of selection is restricted further by the absence of remuneration and by the size of the electoral districts, which necessitates heavy expenditure on the part of a candidate at a contested election. Under these circ.u.mstances, the comparatively low electoral franchise, which admits upon the rolls two-thirds of the voters for members of the a.s.sembly, is absolutely useless to the democratic electors: they are unable to find candidates who will adopt their views, and have been obliged, as at the last elections, to allow all the retiring members to be re-elected without opposition. It should be stated that the members are elected for a period of six years in ten provinces, and retire in rotation at intervals of two years.
The Victorian a.s.sembly consists of ninety-five members who are elected for three years upon the basis of manhood suffrage and receive remuneration at the rate of 270 a year. Conflicts between the two Houses were incessant during the first twenty-five years of Responsible Government. Immediately after its establishment in 1855 a struggle {123} arose as to the right of selection upon pastoral properties, in which the Council supported the interests of the squatters. The issue could not be doubtful, as the squatters, who had been allowed to depasture enormous tracts of land in the early days of the Province, had no fixed tenure and were impeding the settlement of the country.
In 1865 the a.s.sembly pa.s.sed a protective tariff which was distasteful to the Council as representative of the producers, and tried to secure its enactment by tacking it on to the Appropriation Bill. They relied upon the section of the Const.i.tution Act which provides that ”all Bills for appropriating any part of the revenue of Victoria, and for imposing any duty, rate, tax, rent, return or impost, shall originate in the a.s.sembly, and may be rejected but not altered by the Council.” Upon the refusal of the Council to submit to such coercion, the Ministry arranged with various banks that they should advance the funds required for public purposes, levied a tax upon a resolution of the a.s.sembly and paid the civil servants without parliamentary authority. A general election followed, at which the Ministry were successful; the a.s.sembly and Council repeated their action of the previous session, and, finally, the Council agreed to accept the new tariff provided it was submitted to them in the form of a separate Bill. Similar const.i.tutional struggles occurred in 1867 upon the proposed grant to ex-Governor Darling, and in 1877 upon the Bill to provide for the payment of Members {124} of the a.s.sembly. During the following years peace reigned between the two Houses, owing at first to the great prosperity of the Province, which caused universal confidence, and the predominance of material considerations; afterwards to the equally great reaction which compelled politicians to sink their differences and combine to save the credit of their country.
The antagonism was renewed in 1894 upon the proposals for additional taxation, by which the Premier, Mr. Turner, hoped to cope with an antic.i.p.ated deficiency in the revenue of more than half a million pounds. His scheme included the repeal of the existing land-tax, under which landed estates of upwards of 640 acres in extent are taxed annually upon the excess of the capital value over 2,500--an impost which obviously penalises rural, at the expense of urban, properties and was intended to promote the subdivision of the land (though it does not appear to have had much effect in that direction); and the imposition of a tax on unimproved values at the rate of 1d. in the , subject to the exemption of 100 when the value does not exceed 1,000, and of an income tax which, subject to the exemption of incomes not exceeding 200, was to be at the rate of 3d. in the on incomes derived from personal exertion and 6d. on incomes derived from property up to 2,200, above which sum the amount was in both cases to be doubled. Absentees were to pay an additional 20 per cent., {125} and incomes from land were to be exempt where the owner paid the land-tax.
These taxes, it was calculated, would yield an annual revenue of 600,000. The Finance Bill was pa.s.sed in the a.s.sembly at its second reading by a majority of twenty-two, but in committee it was amended so as to exempt from the land-tax land values of less than 500. The resultant deficiency in the proceeds of the tax was made up by a continuance of the primage duties and by an increase of the tax on incomes derived from personal exertion. Upon its transmission to the Council the Bill was summarily rejected, the Minister who was in charge of it alone, beyond the tellers, being in its favour, on the ground that the questions of a tax on unimproved values had not been submitted to the electorate and that, in the existing conditions of the Province, any further burden upon the producers would be opposed to its best interests. The Ministry accepted the decision of the Council and contented themselves with rigid retrenchment, the continuance of the existing land-tax, and the imposition of a progressive income tax which rises to a maximum of sixteen-pence upon the excess over 2,000 of incomes derived from property. According to a statement of the Premier, they intend to make the question a distinct issue at the next elections, and will in the meanwhile take no action in the matter.
In the following session the Council rejected an Electoral Bill which provided for the abolition of {126} the plural vote and the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women, and disagreed with the a.s.sembly upon several important clauses of a Factory Bill, in the legitimate exercise of the functions of a revising Chamber. The Ministry succeeded in 1896 in pa.s.sing the Factory Bill in a form which met some of the objections of the Council, and reintroduced the Electoral Bill, which was subsequently laid aside by the Council on the ground that it had not secured in the a.s.sembly the absolute majority of all the votes required in the case of amendments to the Const.i.tution.
The value of any Second Chamber must rest upon its ability, and the exercise of its ability, to check dangerous tendencies in legislation.
As regards Victoria, it must be admitted that the greatest danger has lain in the tendency to extravagant expenditure due to the fatal facility of obtaining almost unlimited advances from the British capitalist. Politicians have been tempted to outbid each other in the struggle for popular support, and to promise the outlay of vast sums of borrowed money. Judged with reference to this question, the Legislative Council cannot be regarded as having been efficient. The greatest waste of money has occurred in connection with the construction of railways from which there was no likelihood of adequate returns, and with injudicious advances to Irrigation and Water Supply Trusts. The Council has been hampered by the {127} restrictions imposed upon it by the Const.i.tution Act, but it has not admitted that it is debarred from amending Railway Bills, though it has done so but sparingly, owing to the opposition which such action aroused in the a.s.sembly. It would seem that, at the time of the greatest output of the Victorian gold mines and of the high prices obtainable for agricultural and pastoral produce, the Council was as much carried away by the prosperity of the Province as the a.s.sembly, and formed an equally false estimate as to its continuance. It appears, however, to have been the first to realise the imminence of a reaction. A comparison of the British and Victorian finances shows that while, in the former case, speaking broadly, provision is made only for the maintenance of the public services and for some matters of national importance, such as public instruction, in which all parts of the country share equally, in the latter case the expenditure includes the construction of public works which benefit particular localities, and grants and subsidies which benefit particular industries. Under these conditions members of the a.s.sembly are subject to continual pressure from their const.i.tuents, which, it is contended, the members of the Council, owing to the greater size of the const.i.tuencies, are better able to resist. As the whole body of the tax-payers are responsible for the interest on the railways, a locality has everything to gain by the {128} increase of its mileage; if it receives advances for works of irrigation and defaults upon the consequent obligations, it hopes to induce the Government, through its Member, to grant more lenient terms.
The works in many cases are of doubtful value; the liability remains as a burden upon posterity.
The evil is widely recognised, but opinions differ as to the remedy. A step in the right direction was taken by the appointment in 1890 of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Railways, which, it is suggested, should be supplemented by a similar Committee whose duty it would be to report upon all proposals for new works of water supply involving an expenditure of a thousand pounds of State money. Others ask that the Council should be allowed to amend Money Bills, and would do so with more reason if the property qualification for members.h.i.+p were removed, as the electorate already includes the bulk of the stable elements of the population. But the greatest safeguard would appear to lie in the lessons of the past, and in the appointment of Standing Committees whose antecedent sanction shall be essential to proposals for the expenditure of national funds upon public undertakings. It would be advisable to define by Act of Parliament what cla.s.ses of public works might be carried out upon borrowed money; all others would then form a charge upon current revenue.
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The absence of any ultimate appeal in the case of a divergence of opinion between the two Houses has recently been discussed in several of the Provinces. It has been pointed out that the power of the Executive to make additional appointments to nominee Councils is an unsatisfactory device calculated to produce friction between the Governor and his responsible advisers; that elective Councils can force upon the a.s.sembly dissolutions from which they are themselves exempt; and that, in the majority of cases, the Councils are able, owing to the variety of issues and the influence of local and personal considerations, to deny that any particular question has received the verdict of popular approval. The measures rejected by the Victorian Council since 1891 include the Land and Income Tax Bill, the Opium Bill, the Miners' Right t.i.tles Bill, the Mallee Land Bill, and the Village Settlements Amendment Bill. The Council has rejected the Opium Bill twice, and the Bill for the abolition of plural voting three times.
The question was considered in 1894 by a Victorian Royal Commission, which recommended that:--
”(1) If the Legislative a.s.sembly shall in two consecutive sessions pa.s.s any Bill which shall not be pa.s.sed by the Legislative Council, then, notwithstanding such Bill when pa.s.sed in the second session by the Legislative a.s.sembly shall be in an amended form, if the same shall not in such second session be pa.s.sed by the Legislative {130} Council, such Bill, if the a.s.sembly so determine by resolution, shall, in manner to be duly provided, be submitted for acceptance or rejection to the voters on the roll for the Legislative a.s.sembly.
”(2) In the event of the said Bill being duly accepted or approved of by the majority of the voters on the said roll who shall vote when a poll is taken, and upon a certificate to that effect to be duly given by the Speaker, the said Bill shall be transmitted to the Governor for his a.s.sent. Should, however, such Bill be rejected or disapproved of, then, upon the certificate of the Speaker to that effect, the said Bill shall lapse for the session.
”(3) At least six weeks must intervene between the first and the second pa.s.sing of the said Bill by the Legislative a.s.sembly.”
Measures based upon these lines were introduced during 1896 in the a.s.semblies of Victoria, Tasmania, and New South Wales, but, in the latter case alone, reached the Legislative Council. It was thought that that body might receive the Bill favourably, as it would be brought thereby into direct contact with the people, and might overcome the jealousy which is at present felt against it. In fact, it might attain to actual popularity by enabling the electorate to p.r.o.nounce directly upon a distinct issue. But this view did not prevail with the Council, which rejected the measure in the most summary manner.
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