37 
9. The Labour Enactment, I9II. 
The Secretary informs the meeting that at a meeting of the 
Taiping Planters Association held on the 8th ultimo the following 
resolution was passed: “That the Labour Enactment, 1911, be 
cancelled or at least considerably modified.” 
He explains that previous to this he had received notice of a 
motion from Mr. Macfadyen on the same subject and had con- 
st qiuntly placed Mr. Macfadyen’s motion on the Agenda 
Mr. E. Macfadyen, proposing “ that this Association strongly 
deprecates the precipitancy with which the Labourers Enactment, 
1911, was passed through the Federal Council, said that for a law 
conferring such wide and far reaching powers upon the executive, the 
Labour Enactment, 1911, appears to have been passed after only the 
most perfunctory deliberation. No one would suggest that Govern- 
ment resorted to secrecy in order to faciliate its passage. We are 
under no delusion as to the real powers of Government in regard to 
legislation whatever fictions may be maintained about their 
sharing such powers with Councils or Committees. There may be 
limits to the powers of Government in administering some of their 
laws; but in the making of them they are absolute. The burden of 
my complaint is that Government has no moral right to pass a law 
such as this, whatever its actual power, without giving members of 
Council an opportunity to consider its nature and probable effects. 
The official apology for a degree of haste admitted to require 
apology was that the law would only be applied in one instance. 
Surely this is an aggravation rather than an extenuation of the 
circumstances. If Government may take an employer into court 
when they see their way to a conviction; and when they did not, 
may make a new law to meet his special case, it must be patent 
that there ceases to be any guarantee for commercial enterprise at all. 
The whole proceeding appears to be against any right principle. 
This very instance might be so handled as to do infinite damage to 
the reputation of our government for fair play ; which is one of the 
chief commercial assets of this country. 
I am not concerned to argue that the powers conferred should 
not, in the peculiar conditions of the labour situtation here, be in 
existence. My contention is that such powers ought not to be 
exercised by government officers on the advice of other government 
officers alone. To remove the labour force from an estate, by a 
stroke of the pen, is to annihilate that estate as a profit-earning 
concern; and I urge upon the members of Council to secure the 
provision of adequate safeguards against the possible misuse of such 
extreme powers. Whether the necessary safeguard should take the 
form of a reference to the council itself or to a Committee of the 
council or to somebody appointed ad hoc — is not for me to say : but 
I do say emphatically that without such a reference, the perpetuation 
of this enactment would be highly dangerous. If unofficial opinion 
