A PROTEST.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20788, 23 February 1933, Page 8

A PROTEST.

GOVERNMENT BY ORDER-IN-COUNCIL. MORE THAN 3000 IN THREE YEARS. (press association tilegrak.) WELLINGTON, February 22. At a meeting to-day of the executive of the Associated Chambers of Commerce the following resolution was carried:— '' This association views with alarm the statement by the Prime Ministei th'at the Government may resort to the greater use of Orders-in-Council for legislative purposes. The Associated Chambers of Commerce, while being opposed to the sales tax, has endeavoured to be helpful in making legislation equitable, and it is willing to be of continued assistance in properly framing legislation affecting commercial interests. Abuse of the system delegating the powers of Parliament to executive departments has already been carried to excessive lengths in such instances as the export credits pool, picture theatre regulations, and many others, and constitutes an evil that should be firmly chocked, therefore any extension of this system would be distasteful and highly dangerous, and a subjugation of constitutional procedure and personal liberty to expediency., , It was stated that the number of Orders-in-Council issued in the threo years since 1929 had been 3233, compared with 186 Acts passed in that time. Most of those Ord&rs-in-Council were of a machinery nature, but some of them had been important legislative enactments which had never been approved by Parliament. There was at present no provision making Orders-in-Council necessarily subject to either a confirmatory or rescinding resolution as had been recommended by the British Committee on Ministers' Powers, resulting in tho exercise of autocratic powers.