if all concerned in industry genuinely feel that their own fortunes 
are bound up with its success or failure that that solidarity in in- 
dustry which is essential to its prosperity can be achieved. 
68. Our Mission was honoured by two of its members being 
asked to take part in an Industrial Conference held in Melbourne 
during December last. At that conference the necessity for closer 
and more friendly relationship between all concerned in industry 
was fully recognized by the delegates present, and the discussions 
were of so frank a nature that at subsequent meetings there should 
be no obstacle to the candid exposition by all the delegates of their 
difficulties and their aspirations. We hope and believe that from 
future sessions of the conference there will result the formulation 
of agreed alternative methods for fixing wages and laying down 
conditions of employment, which may render the present functions 
of the Arbitration Courts unnecessary, and substitute for them a 
system of settlement of industrial problems by industry itself on 
practical and acceptable lines in an atmosphere of mutual confi- 
dence and goodwill. 
69. We even venture to hope that the spirit generated from this 
conference will be such as to facilitate the task, which after in- 
vestigation such as we have recommended we trust that the 
Government will undertake, of tariff revision. The problem of the 
tariff is, as we have said, closely interlocked with that of the fixa- 
tion of wages and a happy solution of the latter problem should do 
more than anything else could to make possible the solution of the 
former under the indispensable conditions of freedom from class 
or political strife and bitterness. 
The 
Industrial 
Conference. 
PART III. 
SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS. 
70. We would summarize as follows the conclusions to which 
we have been led by the considerations set forth in the foregoing 
pages ‘— 
(1) The indispensable condition of the promotion of trade 
between Great Britain and Australia and of the increase of 
settlement in Australia is the prosperity and absorptive power 
of Australia herself. (Para. 6.) 
(2) The present financial position of Australia is sound in 
the sense that her national income and sources of public 
cevenue are amply sufficient to pay for her Government and 
to provide for the service and repayment of her public debt. 
‘Para. 7.) But 
(8) Australia has, in past years, spent too much unprofitably 
on development schemes which have been undertaken either 
sithout sufficient regard to their probable financial and