PARLIAMENT'S WORK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 228, 26 September 1930, Page 5

PARLIAMENT'S WORK.

TAUPO RAILWAY AGAIN. ABSENT-MINDED MINISTER. DEBATE ON GAMING BILL. (By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. Verv little progress was made by the House* with its sessional programme today. The whole afternoon was devoted to a protracted debate on the report of the Select Committee, which announced that- it had no recommendation to _ make on the petition praying for the immediate resumption of the construction or the Rotorua-Taupo railway. A proposal to refer the report- back to the committee for further consideration was narrowly defeated, the margin being only one vote. The result would have been even had the absent-mindedness of the Hon. W. A. Taverner, Minister of Public Works, not been checked by the Hon. J. B. Donald, Postmaster-General. When the division was being taken Mr. Taverner unwittingly walked into the wronsr lobby, and was hurriedly brought back to the fold by his colleague. In the evening the House occupied itself with the abortive second reading debate on the Gaming Amendment Bill, providing for the telegraphing of investments and the publication of dividends. With the three hours' limit fixed by the Standing Orders there was opportunitv for a few speeches only, and these mostly came from opponents of the measure, who apprehended that the "'talking out" of the bill was the simplest way of killing it. The arrival of the adjournment prevented the second reading from being passed, and it remains for the Government to decide when the bill will again appear as an order of the day. Taranaki in Politics. Tarauaki members have been prominent in piloting one of the Government's most important policy measures of the session, the Unemployment Bill. It was guided through a difficult course in the House of Representatives by the Hon. S. G. Smith (New Plymouth), and as the result of unexpected circumstances another Taranaki legislator, the Hon. R. Masters, took charge of the bill in the Legislative Council, where he is acting-Leader owing to the absence of Sir Thomas Sidey, who is on a health trip to England. Until Mr. Smith's appointment as Minister of Labour, Taranaki had not been represented in the Ministry for more than a decade, but it has now come back into front-bench politics.