The Press Tuesday, September 21, 1926. The Government and "The Press"

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18802, 21 September 1926, Page 8

The Press Tuesday, September 21, 1926. The Government and "The Press"

In a very long statement yesterday to our Timaru correspondent, the Hon. F. J. Rolleston made an elaborate defence of the Government's Parliamentary methods, and a rather interesting attack on ourselves. He even went so far as to issue some kind of a challenge to us, or to anybody, to " name any "specific measure which was hastily "prepared or rushed through the " House," and to declare that be was "prepared to meet that criticism by " stating the facts "; and as it is so unlike Mr RoJleston to suggest that the truth is with him, and not in anyone else, we must suppose that he was feeling really angry. But soreness under criticism does not justify a Minister of the Crown, even if he happens to be Attorney-General, in defending the Government as a lawyer rather than as a plain representative of the people. It is indeed unworthy of Mr Rolleston, unworthy of him personally and unworthy of him as a member of the Government, to seek to give the impression that our complaint of the Government was mainly, or largely, or to any considerable extent at all, that it did not find time to legalise the publication of totalisator dividends and prepared a Bill so hastily that it was numbered by hand with a pen and omitted the name of the Minister in charge. If that casual remark of ours about the Omnibus Bill had a compl :ie answer, as Mr Rolleston says it did, in a point of Parliamentary procedure, we accept his correction in perfect good humour; but Mr Rolleston kiwws that it was a casual remark, he knew that when it was first madp, and he knows that to treat it now as one of our important charges of "wild haste" is opportunism of a not particularly pleasant kind. We feel bound to say, also, that it is going just about as far as political propriety will permit to pass directly from an attack on us over a trivial point of procedure to the charges made "in connexion with this " Bill" by the member for Waitemata. There was never at any time in The Press any kind of suggestion that the Government had acted improperly (in the Harris sense); there was indeed a perfectly definite condemnation of Mr Harris, and yet Mr Rolleston must have known that in associating these two attacks, if he chose to regard them as attacks, he was exposing us to the risk of being. believed by the careless to be in the same boat as Mr Harris. But if these are the most surprising features of Mr Rolleston's statement on the personal side, he is quite as extraordinary politically. If he seriously maintains that the Family Allowance Bill, for example, is good in principle, or that the Town- Planning Bill was adequately considered, that there was no undue haste in passing the Motor Traffic Bill, and that Christchurch was given ample time to consider the Bill foisted on it by the Waimakariri Trust, we shall not say, as he does, that if he will come out with his reasons we shall respond with the " facts," but we shall think with many more of his friends that Party politics has done stranger things to him in a shorter time than anyone would have believed possible a few months ago.