ITS DIGNITY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 247, 18 October 1941, Page 12

ITS DIGNITY

Appointment Of Women To Legislative Council {By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. Further comment on clause 40 of the Statutes Amendment Bill, which provides for the appointment of women to the Legislative Council, and on which the Speaker of the Legislative Council, the Hon. M. Fagan, was asked to give a ruling yesterday morning, was made when the second reading of the bill was debated in the Council yesterday afternoon. It was suggested by the Hon. W. Perry (Wellington) that the clause infringed the privileges of the Council because it was introduced in the House of Representatives, but Hon. T. Bloodworth (Auckland) declared that it was futile to talk of the dignity or privileges of the Council when it was treated with so little respect that it was asked to pass measures that it did not have time to study. What respect or regard was paid to the dignity and privileges of the Council, he asked, when almost in the last hour of the session it was called on to consider a measure of 77 clauses, making amendments to 40 different Acts. If the proposal to introduce women members meant tha tthe Council was to be used more, he would welcome it, but if that was not the case the party in power should carry out its policy and abolish the Council. No one, as a democrat, could oppose the proposal to allow women to sit as members, but such a proposal, affecting a body supposed to have some dignity, could have been brought in a separate measure instead of being sandwiched in between clauses dealing with the rabbit nuisance and rating. "I would vote for the abolition of the Council," Mr. Bloodworth declared, "but so long as it exists dignity is due to it. No chance is allowed to the Council to perform its revisionary function, and if it cannot function there is no reason for it to exist. The country cannot afford expenditure on a body that performs no useful function." I

| " Talk to Themselves " It was useless to ask women to sit in the chamber and more often than not just talk to themselves, he added. If there were men who had given valuable service to the country, and if it was desired that they should be rewarded, then they should be pensioned off without keeping the elaborate system of the Council going. He had returned to the Council because he knew that if he did not accept renomination some other member would _be appointed and things would continue the same as at present.