PARISH CONTROL.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20919, 28 July 1933, Page 10

PARISH CONTROL.

GOVERNMENT OF NE# ZEALAND. DR. BEGG'S CONDKMNAnojIL (rK£S3 ASSOCIATION TELKOEi.M.) )'. WELLINGTON, July 27.'* 1 An assertion that New Zealanl> was getting a very poor reputation because the real rulers of the country were small groups of local body members who had obstructed any attempt made by the Dominion to frea itself from parish control was made by Dr. Campbell Begg, leader oi the New Zealand Legion, in an adidress at Roseneath to-night. Dr. Begg contended that the formation of decentralised local government in districts large enough to govern was necessary not merely to avoid expense but to let New Zealand make any pretence at being a nation or having any future as a nation. "We have not earned the right to use the word national at all," he declared. Dr. Begg said that unless the present Government or any Government decided what legislation was necessary and put it into effect, it simply meant that the people were being betrayed and that the Government had abrogated its powers to govern and had handed them over to a bureaucratic and parochial minority. In a trenchant criticism of local body administration, he declared that the riding system had tended to make the limits of vision the limits of the riding, or, at most, of the county. "We are lagging behind," he said. "Must we always be known as a prematurely aged community that has lost the power of action. senile, unimaginative, a people of learners, of opportunists and parochialists?" i.