Lord Cobham On Democracy

Press, Volume C, Issue 29623, 20 September 1961, Page 22

Lord Cobham On Democracy

(New Zealand Preu Associationj

I WELLINGTON, Sept. 19. So long as the private citizen had free access to an independent legislature all citizens were secure from absolute autocracy, the GovernorGeneral (Lord Cobham) told the New Zealand Bank Officers' Guild today. “So long as our legislators play the rules and allow the electorate to choose their Government at regular intervals. the framework of democracy is safe” he said. “This is democracy’s sole characteristic—the right of the people to change their Government when they want to." This freedom, however, imposed responsibilities of high significance upon all sections of the community, said Lord Cobham. “Otherwise our much-vaur.ted democracy merely becomes a collection of pressure groups pursuing unelightened self-interest. “The organisation of a modem state is so complex, and its various parts are. at the same time, so interconnected, that it is almost impossible to legislate in one direction without the effects of that legislation being felt in half a dozen others. Opposition To Measures

‘There is practically no measure that Parliament can introduce today in any field, political, financial, or social, which will not arouse fierce opposition in some quarters. Almost every- concession to one part of the community tends to impose a corresponding hardship upon another, even if that other be 14,000 miles away. "If Britain removed her farm subsidies at home New Zealand farmers would benefit greatly at the- expense of the British ones. But New

Zealand's exchange position would probably immediately take a dramatic change for the better, enabling her to buy many more goods from Britain. So, very loosely speaking. British industry would profit at the expense of British farmers—a state of affairs which the food subsidies were precisely designed to correct,” Lord Cobham said. “The men and women who devoted themselves to government today were undertaking a task which was wellnigh superhuman.” Lord Cobham continued. The government in power, is always under pressure, not only from the opposition, whose duty it is to, oppose, but from’ countless other people in the conununity: not only front public opinion as a whole, but from literally hundreds of groups whose interests almost necessarily conflict;” he said. “Art ®f the Possible" “Government is the art of the possible; and if is never possible to do everything that . is necessary. To the popular cry ‘Why don’t they do. this, that or the other?' the answer is ‘Because it would cost £5O million and nobody would yeU ptore loudly than you if you were taxed another 6d in the £.’

“If the national life of the democracies is destined to be dominated by highly-organ-ised groups exerting ceaseless pressure upon the Government. by a press which reflects the views of the least enlightened, and by a bureaucracy given to parochialism and restrictions, w-here the Government pays lip service to 'private enterprise’ while depriving it. by high taxation, of the rewards

of skill and hard work, then I think that democracy is bound to perish through its own inertia. “Whatever one can say of our ideological opponents, they are far from inert. The democracies have to show that they can achieve by self-discipline what the communist countries achieve by imposed discipline—and tha time is getting ever shorter.” said Lord Cobham.