With the beginning of this mouth came into force the Australian Navigation Act. It is a monumental measure, and was born in the days when the Labour Party were the aggressive controllers of Federal Legislation. It aimed to provide an Australian—substitute for the British Merchant Shipping Act, and to set the effete civilization at the other end of the world an example of how things ought to be done for the men who go down in ships. The Bill was really piloted through Parliament by the late Senator R. Guthrie, then President of the Seamen's Union, who sought to import into the enactment ample provisions for the intellectual, bodily and gastronomical comfort of the forecastle hands. it also provided that no steamer may trade along the Australian coast, unless registered as complying with these provisions and paying the full wages rates.
The Bill passed out of Parliament in 1908, but did not become actual law until July, 1921. Perhaps, for his peace of mind, it is as well that Senator Guthrie was knocked down by a tramear and killed only a few months ago. The Act has been amended in al particulars since it received a tardy royal assent, and the chief change has been to exempt from the—restric tion in regard to coastal trading such ships as those travelling from eastern ports and serving some of the isolated communities in tropical Australia.
The most extraordinary feature of the tangled web, which the Act has created, is the discovery that the seamen themselves are quite dissatisfied with the model—conditions they were to the given. They declared at the end of last year that the Act, which had not then come into force, was already out of date, and that their accommodation was unsatisfactory, the manning scale inadequate, and the victualhing tariff deficient—in variety. Now we have the captain of one ship stating that expansive alterations nade to comply with the Act: are not approved by his Improved ventilation of the castle quarters created too much draught, and the seamen stuffed clothes up the newly installed improvements. The Act is only seven days old, and already captains are complaining that the crews, or some members of them, seem to delight in damaging the owners' property, and the artistic fittings which were to mitigate the hardships of the seamen's calling are already as dirty, dingy, chipped and battered as were those of the ships which travelled the southern seas ere ever the Australian Navigation Act had taken root in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.