The Depression of the 1930s was, for many reasons, a decisive episode in Australian history. Not the least of those reasons was the Commonwealth Arbitration Court's adoption of a wage policy directed toward a macroeconomic outcome. Ironically, the Court was in a position to attempt this role only because the election in 1929 of a Labor Government, which opposed the Court's strategy of wage reduction, had averted its extinction. Its efforts to counter the economic effects of the Depression are the major focus of chapters 9 and 10, without neglecting such other developments as there were in the evolution of wage policy. Chapters 11 and 12 then move to the period of recovery, in which there was an understandably more relaxed approach to wages and conditions. In one important case—the basic wage inquiry of 1937—the Court's decision was again shaped, in part at least, by a macroeconomic strategy, the converse of that of the Depression years.

8.1 The Court

The four judges appointed to the Court in 1926 and 1927 remained in office throughout most of the 1930s. In Lukin's case, this was a formality. He was appointed to the Bankruptcy Court and ceased his active membership of the Arbitration Court in May 1930. This left Dethridge, Beeby, and Drake-Brockman to hear the major cases of the Depression years. A new judge, H B Piper, was appointed in February 1938. Dethridge died in December 1938. Beeby was appointed Chief Justice in March 1939. At the same time, Thomas O'Mara became a judge of the Court.