PARTY LOYALTY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 163, 12 July 1928, Page 10

PARTY LOYALTY.

MINISTERIAL THRUSTS.

LICENSING- BILL EVENTS.

NATIONALIST LEADER ON REFORM

(By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.)

WELLINGTON, Wednesdav.

Resentful of Ministerial thrusts at the United party's failure to produce a leader and a programme accompanied by declarations of their lovaltv to their own leader, Mr. G. W. Forbes, Leader of the Nationalist party, suggested in his Address-in-Reply speech that there had been too much protesting of loyalty on the Reform side. He thought that oidinarv courtesy would have prompted the Minister of Health to recognise him (Mr. Forbes) as Leader of the National I-arty, a position to which he had been properly elected.

j The Hon. .T. A. Young: I was referring to the United party. Mr. Foi bes added that the Minister was welcome to any party capital he could make, but when talking about loyalty he might remember his own attitude to his leader, Mr. Coates, on the Licensing Bill. Some Reform members construed loyalty in different wavs. Mr. A. Hamilton: That was a nonparty measure.

Mr. Forbes replied that when the Prime Minister moved to report progress on the Licensing Bill, with leave to sit again, he had the right as Leader of the House, concerned with its business, to ask for the loyalty of his own Ministers But Mr. Young so construed his idea of loyalty as to go into tlie opposite lobby to that of his chief. Mr. Coates was put into a difficult position but for the vote of the Speaker and some other on the Oppositoin side. Then the member for Temuka had declared! he would need seriously to consider hi'elation to hi* party and the head of tlie Clovernment.

"They seem to regard the head of *he Government." concluded Mr Forbes "much as the Chinese look on their ios«' Tf he annoys them thev take him off the wall and lump on him. then put him back again."