Calling for order

Press, 12 March 1985, Page 18

Calling for order

In rugby they are referees, in cricket they are umpires, and in Parliament he is Mr Speaker; people whose job it is to see that the agreed rules are adhered to are unlikely to please everyone all the time. The present Chairman of Committees and Acting Speaker of Parliament, Mr Terris, has been having a particularly torrid time in the last couple of weeks. His appointment as Deputy Speaker last August was hotly contested by the National Opposition then; the campaign was renewed when Mr Terris became Acting Speaker a fortnight ago as a result of the absence from the House of the Speaker, Sir Basil Arthur, who is in hospital for surgery. Mr Terris, it seems, has been unable to please the Opposition at any turn. Whatever the justification for this, the concentration of Parliament’s time and energies on what had become — to the public’s eye at least — a barrage of personal abuse and petty bickering was unseemly. At last, the Acting Speaker and the Leader of the Opposition, Mr McLay, have had a heart-to-heart talk, one result of which has been that the Opposition has withdrawn a notice of motion expressing no confidence in the Acting Speaker. Parliament will not now

have to debate the notice of motion. Perhaps the National Opposition was persuaded by its own arguments that the House has enough to do without “seeking to divert the country from more urgent matters.” This objection, levelled by a member of the Opposition at the introduction of the Homosexual Law Reform Bill last week, could be applied with equal justification to the time wasted on this prickly feud over who is to be Parliament’s temporary referee. The Opposition can hardly argue the appropriateness of its campaign against the Acting Speaker while it claims, as Mr McLay did last week, that the country is “reeling from crisis to crisis.” . The “long and frank talk” between Mr Terris and Mr McLay that has led to the welcome shelving of the quarrel was overdue. The Opposition is prepared now to “see how things go in the House” as a result. The electorate will be just as keen to watch the performance of all members. As the swollen correspondence columns in the country’s newspapers show, several important issues command the public’s attention at present; who sits in the Speaker’s chair is not one of them.