"AREN'T WE ALL?"

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 240, 10 October 1932, Page 6

"AREN'T WE ALL?"

It is one of the uses of the Legislative Council that in that abode of relatiVe peace— where falls not hail or rain or any snow of electoral pressure, nor ever wind of popular clamour blows loudly—legislators are in a position to speak more freely than in the Chamber. It might not be correct to say that Sir James Parr's emphatic support of the .Economy Commission, and his frank declaration that everybody was to blame for the waste of the past, would not or could not have been spoken in the House, but we may at least say that the conditions there are less favourable for such a display of candour. Sir James Parr's admission that the report is "a sorry tale of scandalous public waste and inefficiency" is backed by an authority that cannot lightly be set'aside, for Sir James was in the spending House for many years, and for quite a long period was a Minister of the Crown.HHre r would frankly admit that he shared in the responsibility, for he was a Minister during the post-war years when money flowed like water, and as Minister of Education he was no niggard. That a public man of his experience should justify the findings of the Commission and speak of "clamant electors," "selfish vested interests" and "ill-informed mass sentiment" as factors in promoting extravagance is certainly impressive. The most important part of his frank admission is the placing of responsibility upon all. No party is exempt from the charge that public money was spent recklessly and foolishly, and that economy was an unpopular flag to raise on the political field. We have only to ask ourselves what chance a candidate would have had who in the heyday of our national spending had announced bluntly that if elected he would give all his attention to national questions and would not bother about grants for his district, or that he would definitely oppose the extension of a local railway. We shall not learn the lesson aright if we do not admit that the sin of extravagance'lay upon the whole people,, and that electors were just as much to blame as those who represented them.' In the language of a popular play now being revived on the screen, "Aren't we aU.3" _