[Editor: This article, regarding the Sugar Works Guarantee Act Amendment Bill 1901 (Qld.), was published in The Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld.), 28 May 1901.]
Sugar Works Guarantee Act.
Royal Assent withheld.
Labour difficulties the reason.
The Government has received word to the effect that the royal assent to the Sugar Works Guarantee Act Amendment Bill, passed through Parliament last session, has been withheld.
The Hon. D. H. Dalrymple, Minister for Agriculture, on being spoken to on the matter yesterday, said that the difficulty appeared to be the amendment, proposed by Mr. Givens and finally accepted by the Premier, regarding the labour question.
The amendment was: “From and after the passing of this Act no aboriginal native of Asia, Africa, or of the Pacific Islands shall be employed by any company to which any advance has been or may hereafter be made under the provisions of the Sugar Works Guarantee Acts of 1893 to 1900, in or about any sugar mill or permanent tramway owned or worked by the company; and the company and every managing director, manager, superintendent, and person in charge of such mill or tramway shall be liable to a penalty, to be recovered in a summary way before any two justices, of £1 in respect of each such native for every day during which such native is employed contrary to the provisions of this section. The loading of cane on trucks on a tramway shall not be deemed to be a contravention of this section.”
Mr. Dalrymple said it had been regarded at that time by the majority of the members of the Government as a dangerous amendment, but rather than imperil the passage of the bill it had been accepted. The Minister contended that there had never been any need for such an amendment, because black labour was not employed in connection with any of the central mills in the State; the managers and the directors would not have the Polynesians near the mill yard.
And now the result was that the bill was not to become law, a very serious thing for the industry in many respects. The additional £150,000 which was to have been spent could not be used. It had been intended to erect two new mills, one on the Russell River and one on the Johnstone, and help one or two of the existing mills with extra tramway extension.
In these districts people had settled on the land, having all this in view, and had planted cane in the hope of seeing the mills go up and the tramways extended near to their farms, and now they had to be disappointed.
Moreover, plans of the new buildings had already been prepared by an engineer appointed by him, and all for nothing. He quite saw why the royal assent should be withheld, because the bill, as it was now, would simply interfere with existing British treaties in the matter of Asiatic labour.
It was altogether a serious question, for he could not recommend any additional expenditure unless the Act became law. In the original Act Mr. Powers had introduced an amendment which had passed, stipulating that £500,000 — and no more — should be voted by the Government for the establishment of central mills in Queensland, and the Government were therefore bound by Act of Parliament from extending the limit of expenditure. At present then, they were rather in a fix.
Source:
The Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld.), 28 May 1901, p. 3 (Second Edition)
Also published in:
The Western Star and Roma Advertiser (Roma, Qld.), 8 June 1901, p. 4
Editor’s notes:
Act = an Act of parliament, a law (in its written form, a law is called a “statute”)
See: 1) “Act of parliament”, Wikipedia
2) “Statute”, Wikipedia
bill = a proposed law, or a proposed amendment to an existing law
See: “Bill (law)”, Wikipedia
Givens = Henry Thomas Givens (1864-1928) (known as Thomas), miner, trade unionist, newspaper editor, and politician (Labor Party); he was born in Cappagh White (also known as: Cappawhite or Cappaghwhite; in County Tipperary, Ireland) in 1864, came to Australia in 1882, and died in Canterbury (Victoria) in 1928
See: 1) D. J. Murphy, “Thomas Givens (1864–1928)”, Australian Dictionary of Biography
2) “Thomas Givens”, Parliament of Australia
3) “Givens, Thomas”, Queensland Parliament
4) “Thomas Givens”, Wikipedia
royal assent = the formal signing of legislation passed by a parliament by the ruling monarch (or the ruling monarch’s representative, such as a Governor or a Governor-General), by which the legislation then becomes law; the approval; under the colonial, state, and federal constitutions of Australia, even after legislation was assented to by a Governor or a Governor-General in Australia, the ruling monarch of the United Kingdom had the legal ability to rescind the vice-regal assent within a specified period of time
See: 1) “Royal assent”, Wikipedia
2) “Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act – Sect 59: Disallowance by the Queen”, Commonwealth Consolidated Acts [the federal constitution of Australia allows the UK monarch to “disallow any law within one year from the Governor-General’s assent”]
voted = allocated money or finances by a decision or a vote of parliament, a government, or another organisation
[Editor: The original text has been separated into paragraphs.]
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