Chapter XVII.
Other Reforms.
Other labour laws and general reforms passed by Mr. Seddon’s Administration cover so much ground that it is not possible to do more than refer to them briefly in this work. He personally introduced over 550 Bills into the House of Representatives; 200 of them passed that branch of the Legislature, and over 180 stand to his credit on the Statute Book. It will be seen, therefore, that even a list of his enactments would take up much space. In many cases the measures he took in hand were not his original schemes, and attempts had been made to pass them before; but he watched the advance of public opinion, and when he realised that the time was ripe he lost no time in giving the people what he believed they desired. He made measures his own, remodelled them, and successfully piloted them through their stages, so that they now stand as his. In the same way he dealt with schemes that had already been in operation in the colony, consolidating the laws relating to them, bringing them up to date, and making them applicable to the colony’s changed conditions. New Zealand’s labour laws, as they are now in use, are so numerous that they occupy a thick octavo volume of 500 pages, with small print.[1]
Throughout the first few years of the Liberal Party’s term of power, there were many bitter struggles over an Act regulating shopping and the system of employing shop-assistants. This movement, which began in Parliament in 1891, was practically the first attempt of the kind in the Australasian colonies. Mr. Reeves, who knows more about the struggles over labour legislation in those days than anyone else, says that it cost more
- ↑ “The Labour Laws of New Zealand,” with an Introduction by Mr. Edward Tregear, Secretary for Labour.—Government Printing Office, Wellington.
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