A LEGISLATIVE SCANDAL.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13610, 20 December 1909, Page 6

A LEGISLATIVE SCANDAL.

-Most people after reading our Parliamentary reports this morning wili probably ogres with us that the procees of "legislation by exhaustion" has now reached a point when it has become not only a scandal, but a crime. The House met at 10 o'clock .on Friday morning, and with the usual intervals for meals, it sat until 5.30 on Saturday morning. It then adjourned for four and a half hours until 10 a.m., when it sat until midnight, and probably would have continued still longer but for the fortunate circumstance of Sunday.intervening. At 1 o'clock on Saturday morning, when the House had befen sitting for fifteen hours, Mr Massey made an emphatic protest "against this method of dealing with the country's business. He drew attention to the state of the House. A casual inspection showed (our correspondent tells us) that out of 80 members, there were not 20 present. There were only eleven sitting upright in their seats. There were others lying down—some of them aeleep and occasionally snores were heard. Yet these were the eonoytions under which the Government chose to force, through the Estimates, and hundreds of thousands of pounds of the people's money were voted away by a handful of members physically incapable, through exhaustion, of considering what they were doing, still less of submitting the expenditure proposed by the Government to any intelligent criticism or investigation.- In these circumstances, the theory that Parliament exercises anj control over the finances is reduced) to a farce in practice. 'This system, deliberately adopted by the Government, is not only unfair to the country, but it is grossly unfair to the members to submit them to such a strain. It" is not unlikely that the health of some of them may be permanently injured, and certainly bull-dozing tactics of this kind will tend still further to discourage some of the best representatives of the community from offering their services to the public. There is not the least necessity for this shameful scamping of the country's business. It could have been avoided if the Government had brought down a more reasonable programme, and started earlier on some of the more important business, instead of allowing, and even encouraging a waste of time in the first part of the session. It could also have been avoided if the Government had arranged to adjourn the House over Christmas, resuming for a short period in the new year. Members are presumably sent to Wellington to transact the country's business, and should be prepared to devote sufficient time to doing it properly. If the present system is to be pursued, they might as well stay away altogether, so far as the benefit to the country is concerned, and certainly it would be very much better for their own health.