The Dominion. MONDAY, JUNE 29, 1908. THE SESSION.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 236, 29 June 1908, Page 6

The Dominion. MONDAY, JUNE 29, 1908. THE SESSION.

The Parliamentary session that opens to-day promises to have some features of. unusual interest. In tho first place, the disappearance of most of the circumstances that made ior verbosity and late sittings in the past should guarantee that -the session will be shorter than usual and (he nightly hour of rising a good deal earlier. If the now arrangements will guarantee that only those members will speak who are really able and anxious to assist intelligently in the work of legislation, the public will gladly put up with the slight discomforts that members may suffer. Hp would be a rashly optimistic man, however, who would look forward to an improvement in the quality of tho work turned out. The Prime Minister has announced an enormous programme, which everybody knows is merely a makebelieve. It is certain, therefore, that the Government intends to follow, if it can, ,tho bad practice of the past, and we shall probably find at tho end of the session that Parliament has dawdled along unfruitfully for months, and wound up with a burst of ill-framed, unconsidered, and defective laws which will require amendment next year. We would suggest to Mr. Massey that he should reverse his usual custom, and enter his protest against this annual scandal beforehand. Unless they desire to be regarded as friends of tho bad system that the public, which has to bear the burden of its fruits, grow weary of years ago, members will demand from the Government some intimation;respecting its real intentions. All that can bo said with any certainty just now is that the. major measures'in tho Government's list will not appear upon tho Statute Book. . ''The legislative reform most urgently required is a new measuro to replace tho system of industrial arbitration that has degenerated, undera complacent administration, into a farco'that would bo laughable wero it not that it is productive of such rank injustice, besides being an affront to law and order. The bakers' strike has como just in time to emphasise the urgency of Parliamentary action. Tho country will be satisfied with nothing less than an amendment of the law that will make a strike tho very worst, instead of, as it is at present, the very best, card that militant Labour can play. Last year's Bill, useful as, it is in many important respects, is assuredly not such an amendment. Under it, men will strike at their union's nod just as readily as at present. Even with an honest and fearless administration,, that Bill will be usolesa as a safeguard of industrial pcaco.

Parliament must act, however, on the assumption that the administration in the future will be as contemptuous of justice as it has been during the past year. What is required is an Act that is automatic in its action, and not dependent upon an administration that goes in fear of losing the votes of Labour. This is no time to experiment with a change in the electoral law, or with a great system of national pensions. The country should be consulted before any system of second ballots is forced upon the House, and it will bo quite time to consider an enormous extension of the old-age pensions schcmo when the finances of the country have been placed upon a sounder footing. 1 , Before indulging in the luxury of universal pensions, the Government should reduce taxation, and so improve its administration as to render unnecessary the lavish borrowings which afford the country so much present comfort at the cost of future embarrassments.

It is upon the question of financc, indeed, that members should concentrate most of their attention just now, since the Prime Minister is anxious to follow up with active extravagance his prolonged assertion of the impregnable prosperity and opulence of the Dominion. Should he base his requests for lavish expenditure upon the prosperity that the country has for so long, enjoyed, members should remind him that the country has had the spending of just under £25,000,000 of borrowed money during the past fourteen years. Our prosperity is to that extent fictitious. The Government is committed to some unusually heavy expenditure. The Manawatu Hallway purchase will account for a million; the new roading policy will absorb a million more; heavy borrowing is contemplated for the extension' of the advances to settlers; the Midland .Railway will be a heavy annual burden. Never was there a time when the strictest economy was more necessary. Yet the Prime Minister selects this as an opportune moment to launch out into the wildest extravagance ■' in rebuilding Parliament House. So far as can be gathered, he desires to build an enormous and palatial House on the site now occupied by the Governor's residence, to erect a costly and sumptuous Departmental building on the site of the old Parliamentary building, to purchase or exchange land as a site for Government House, and to link the whole tremendous scheme with the proposed new railway station. There are in Parliament a good many members who will not be a party to this unnecessary and expensive plan, and we hope that they will take a firm stand against it. There is no occasion for parsimony: everybody desires that Parliament should be well housed; but just as he can see no middle course between the wildest optimism and the . bluest of blue funk, no Sir Joseph Ward will refuse to admit that you can avoid parsimony cxccpt by becoming a spendthrift. •