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56.

to s 51(xx) would in each case have extended the power by authorising the Parliament to make laws with respect to the "creation, dissolution, regulation, and control" of corporations. The amendment proposed to s 51(xxxv) would have extended the federal Parliament's power, in 1910, to making laws with respect to (among other things) "[l]abour and employment, including … [t]he wages and conditions of labour and employment in any trade industry or calling"; in 1912, to making laws with respect to "[l]abour, and employment, and unemployment"; and in 1926, by omitting from s 51(xxxv) the words "extending beyond the limits of any one State".

128 The 1910 proposal about corporations was advanced by the then Acting Prime Minister and Attorney-General, Mr Hughes, in response to the decision in Huddart Parker. It was advanced on the basis that "[t]he National Parliament must have this power of dealing with corporations" – a power which "[w]e thought that paragraph xx. gave us"[1]. Corporations were said to be a national matter because "the distinguishing feature of modern production [was] the great and ever-increasing power, extent, and influence of combines"[2]. Although put forward in conjunction with a proposed alteration to legislative power with respect to industrial relations, the focus of the proposed alteration to the corporations power was upon what now would be called trade practices questions. The 1912 proposal about corporations was advanced (again by Mr Hughes as Attorney-General) on a generally similar basis[3].

129 By contrast, the 1926 proposal about the corporations power was not separated from the proposals about industrial matters and, at least so far as the Parliamentary Debates reveal, the central purpose of the amendments was to "cover industrial relations generally"[4]. In 1946[5] the proposal again focused

  1. ↑ Australia, House of Representatives, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), 18 October 1910 at 4704.
  2. ↑ Australia, House of Representatives, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), 18 October 1910 at 4704.
  3. ↑ Australia, House of Representatives, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), 19 November 1912 at 5625–5636.
  4. ↑ Australia, House of Representatives, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), 20 May 1926 at 2159.
  5. ↑ Constitution Alteration (Industrial Employment) Bill 1946.
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