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KEI'OKT OF PKOCEEDINOS OK THK CONFEKKNCB

with that vessel ; but what I am broadly trying to get at is this—that there shall not be indiscriminate trading between fir- Pacific and Australia by foreign vessels without our having a say in regard to the conditions. Mu. DUGALD THOMSON : But how are you going (o arrive at that? Y'ou propose that that vessel should have taken coastal cargo first of all. Sin WILLIAM LYNE: She should be a trading coasting vessel. Hon. DUGALD THOMSON : If you only mean to apply it to trading coastal vessels, she might extend her journey to Fiji. Sib WILLIAM LYNE : Or she may come there with the intention of trading between Australia and Fiji. That is what I want. Hon. DUGALD THOMSON : There is the difficulty. Mu. LLEWELLYN SMITH : Thai is more limited. perhaps, than I think we understood. It is only really the men taken on in Australia —the seamen shipped in Australia—the wages contract made in Australia. ' Hon. W. M. HUGHES: I do not think the Conference realises that the Islands of the Pacific ought to be (if they are not) OUT exclusive monopoly so far as trading is concerned. t do not mean to say excluding Great Britain; I mean excluding Foreign Powers. Gnat Britain has been rather lax in one or two arrangements made lately, and I am sure of this, that the trade of the Pacific, if not strenuously fought for, will go entirely into the hands of the Germans. Sib WILLIAM LYNE : It is going very fast now, I am sorry to s.iy. Hon. W". M. HUGHES: We have to heavily subsidise in order to mak3 any fight at all. The Germans are subsidising boats. They mn thtir boats practically at a loss on purpose to get the trade, and they are most formidable competitors. Ido not profess any great brotherly love for the Germans myself; I leave that to other people. Hon. W. M. HUGHES : I shall be very glad to do anything at all The CHAIRMAN : I understand Sir William Lyne's proposal is that these conditions with regard to wages shall apply to a crew picked up in Australia for the Fijian trade, and not to a crew got in Great Britain or outside Australia. Sir William simply wants these wages conditions to apply to a contract entered into in the Colony—a crew picked up there. Hon. W. M. HUGHES : Of course, you know the kind of trade there is. The CHAIRMAN : You could not engage men at all unless you paid them the current rate of wages. Hon. W. M. HUGHES : You know the kind of trade that is done. This is not hypothetical at all— it is a concrete fait. They take stores and things to the Islands, and trade them for the produce of the Islands. Sydney is the main distributing centre, and thence copra, oil, nutmegs, and so on are sent all over the world. Now for this trade we are very conveniently suited, and we have a very large amount of capital invested in it, and I am bound to say we cannot keep up that rate which we consider sufficient for wages and for decent livinsr in Australia if we are going to compete against people who only pay one-third of it. Wo cannot do it. The CHAIRMAN; But yours is rather a different pioposa!, is it not, Mr. Hughes? Would you impose those conditions as to wages with regard to the sailors who have been engaged outside Australia? Hon. W. M. HUGHES: When a ship comes, sav. with oversea cargo, or in ballast, to Sydney, and then proceeds to Fiji, and coine-s back loaded from Fiji, if she is going on with that loading to England, I do not think we have any right to bother with her, but if she is going to discharge that loading at Sydney, or tranships at some other Australian port, into one of the boats that bring South Sea trade to Sydney, and transfer their cargo into an oversea vessel, that is coastal trade, and local conditions should be observed.

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Sib JOSEPH WARD : Would not this meet the position. Supposing the Conference pass a resolution " That it be a recommendation to the Imperial Govern- " ment to direct" (Fiji being a Crown Colony) "that " boats that return cargoes from Fiji to Australia are "not to be cleared unless they pay the same rate of " wages as British ships trading within Australian " waters." I do not think you can get over the difficulty that we cannot legislate we cannot get legislation passed—for ships outside our own waters, and once you gel into the ocean, it is outside our own waters. Rut if you can insure that the rate of pay (that is one of the important matters we are on) on ships going from Sydney to Fiji is to be the same as in the case of your coastal trade, and that the Crown Colony, before charing that ship, say, from Fiji to Sydney, would impose the returning of the crews upon its articles at the same rate of pay that you were paying, that w.uld to a very large extent get over the point you are raising. Hon. W. M. HUGHES: Certainly. Mb COX : May I say that Mr. Hughes has got all he wants already. The first part of the clearance of that small ship is in the Commonwealth, and the Commonwealth conditions apply. The CHAIRMAN : Of course, we have not got a motion before us, and therefore we ought to know really what it is that is proposed. Sir William Lyne's motion I can quite understand, but Mr. Hughes's proposal is a very different one, and it seems to me to be, with all respect, an almost impossible one, if I understand it. Perhaps I do not, and that is what I want to know. Take a German ship calling at Sydney and then proceeding, with a German crew engaged in Hamburg, to Fiji. Do I understand that if she picks up a cargo (according to Mr. Hughes's proposal) at Sydney, and proceeds to Fiji, she has got to pay the Australian rate of wages for the whole of her crew engaged in Germany, and that otherwise she is not to proceed on her voyage ? Hon. W. M. HUGHES : No, that is not my proposition, and I do not think that any sane person would ever dream of it. The CHAIRMAN : I quite agree. Hon. W. M. HUGHES : What I was suggesting is this—that first of all we never hope to enforce our law, not only on German ships, but on British ships, outside the territorial limits. No doubt, they will pay directly they get out of our jurisdiction their usual rate of wages. If a German vessel goes to Sydney, transfers its cargo into a Fijian boat.—which later comes back from Fiji and transfers its cargo in turn into a big Norddeutscher-Lloyd—the Fijian boat has been engaged in the coasting trade. Here is a crew engaged at Hamburg or Bremen for a three years' period, at German rates; it is competing directly with BurnsPhilips and other Colonial firms, and to all intents and purposes, Sydney being, the headquarters, they are workmen in the Commonwealth, and they are competing with our own men. We say on such a boat (which is very different from an oversea boat within the meaning you were speaking of just now. going all the way to Hamburg) on such a boat Colonial conditions ought to apply. We cannot make them apply except in the port of Sydney. I admit that at once. Sir Joseph suggested that an arrangement might be made that the Crown Colony should fall in with us. I do not know about that, but I do say that, so far as Sydney is concerned, Section 8 ought to apply. The CHAIRMAN : A crew engaged in Sydney? Hon. W .M. HUGHES: No; this applies to persons engaged elsewhere to perform a contract in the Commonwealth, but it says that it shall not apply to persons engaged to serve as part of the crew in a vessel engaged in the coasting trade in Australian waters. Obviously it applies, then, to seamen. It is a question whether this section will not catch them. If it does not I have no doubt at all in my own mind that the Commonwealth Parliament would, when it was pointed out to them, ana nil it so that it would. Mb. HAyELOCK WILSON : Might I say a word on this. I think it would work its own cure. Under the Australian Act, I understand, there is a clause that