The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1928. ORDERS-IN-COUNCIL.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 248, 19 October 1928, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1928. ORDERS-IN-COUNCIL.

For the oause that lacks assistance, For the" wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the And the good that tee can do.

The Farmers' Union, through its Dominion Executive, has protested against the practice, so freely followed by the Reform Government, of legislating by means of Orders-in-Council. It has received a reply from the Prime Minister which is not at all likely to satisfy anybody who has a serious regard for the principles of constitutional government, to say nothing of democracy. For Mr. Coates insists that the principle of governing by Order-in-Council is "sound" —by which he presumably means that it is convenient; and he is evidently prepared to go on administering the affairs of the Dominion on these lines as long as the electors permit him to retain office. The Wellington "Evening Post" has just pointed out that though the Board of Trade was abolished in 1923, the powers vested by the Aet in the Minister of Commerce and Industries are still being exercised, and it is in regard to the use of Ministerial authority for purposes never originally contemplated by Parliament that the Farmers' Union has recorded its disapproval.

This seems to us a very serious public question, and it is remarkable that no vigorous stand has yet been made against the practice either by the members of Parliament, whose privileges have been thus invaded, or by the electors who have seen their political rights confiscated at the arbitrary will of Ministers. Needless to say, Liberalism admits no justification for the habitual use of Orders-in-Council as a substitute for legislation, and Sir Joseph Ward has strongly condemned the practice. But Mr. Coates maintains thai it is right and proper that "Parliament should lay down main principles, leaving details, which are often concerned with highly technical matters, and with which it would be a waste of time for Parliament to concern itself." Translated into simpler terms, this merely means that the country is to be governed not by the collective voice of Parliament, but by the personal fiat of Ministers, advised by their Departmental officials; and this is virtually the way in which we have been governed for a long" time past in many important respects.

It is not to be supposed that such abuses of Ministerial authority are confined to New Zealand. As a matter of fact, they are more flagrant and serious in England, where the rapid growth of bureaucracy in recent years has aroused the apprehensions of many able jurists and political theorists. Professor J. H. Morgan, one of the greatest authorities on constitutional law, has recently shown that there are in force in the United Kingdom not less than 20,000 statutory Rules and Orders, and that they are issued by the Departments at the rate of 30 for every law passed by Parliament. The House of Commons is apparently still blind to the dangers that this form of government involves. For it accepts without demur the modification of its decisions by Ministers; and in 1925 it actually empowered the Minister of Health "to do anything which appears to him necessary and expedient" in connection with a certain Act, and permitted him even to modify the provisions of the Act itself at his own discretion. As a leading English newspaper puts the case, "the Civil Servant is usurping legislative and judicial functions that the Constitution wisely denies him." When Ministers are permitted, on the advice of their Departmental subordinates, to modify the law or to issue edicts that have the full force and effect of laws, we have no longer Responsible Government, but bureaucratic despotism; and that is the position into which we are drifting rapidly in New Zealand. As the Christchurch "Press" remarks, it would be interesting to get a return of all the Ordprs-in-Council issued in recent years for the purpose of "giving effect" to existing Acts; and "if the information cannot be supplied, the public will know what to think."