The basic 
wage. 
64. The indictment of the system of the Arbitration Courts 
which we have heard is a heavy one; and we feel that it is well 
founded on many grounds, and particularly on the ground that 
the system has tended to consolidate employers and employees 
into two opposing camps, and has lessened the inducement to 
either side to resort to round table conferences for that frank and 
confidential discussion of difficulties in the light of mutual under- 
standing and sympathy which is the best means of arriving at fair 
and workable industrial agreements. 
65. A change in the method prevalent in Australia of dealing 
with industrial disputes appears to us to be essential, and we hold 
that there should be a minimum of judicial and governmental inter- 
ference in them except in so far as matters affecting the health and 
safety of persons engaged in industry may be concerned. 
66. If the settlement of industrial disputes must continue to be 
referred to Arbitration Courts, we think that the faults of the 
system will continue to be intensified unless an end can be put to 
overlapping and conflict between the spheres of Commonwealth 
and State jurisdiction, and the Courts themselves are laid under 
an unqualified statutory instruction to have regard to the economic 
affects of their awards both on the industry with which the awards 
may be immediately concerned and on other industries which may 
be indirectly affected by them. We think, too, that it should be a 
condition of access to an Arbitration Court that the parties should 
rst have made a bona fide attempt to arrive at a settlement of 
their dispute by way of conference with each other, and that a full 
statement of the points in regard to which they have failed to 
arrive at an agreement should be laid before the Court. This pro- 
sedure should secure that if either side has shown itself unreason- 
ible the Court shall be made aware of it. 
67. Further, a system of wage fixation resting upon a basic 
money wage which rises or falls with a varying index figure of the 
cost of living is open to the gravest criticism, as tending to deprive 
employees of any interest in the prosperity of the industry with 
which they are connected. ILiet us assume that by better, more 
energetic, and more willing work on the part of all concerned from 
the highest to the lowest, the output of Australian industries were 
increased with no increase in overhead cost. The natural economic 
affect would be that prices all round would fall and that consump- 
tion and profits would rise ; but as the cost of living would fall the 
basic wage would also fall, and with it all wages fixed by the 
Arbitration Courts in relation to the basic wage with margins for 
special skill and the like. Thus the system is such as to give the 
worker in industry no interest in a cheaper cost of living, and no 
inducement to that increased efficiency which would tend to bring 
t about. Tn such a case as we have imagined it would be only 
right that wages should rise and that the workmen should share in 
the increased prosperity so largely attributable to them. It is only