NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 993, 7 December 1910, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

Although wo aro sure that the public will bo glad to get as far away _ from politics as possible for a while, there is an aspect of the comments of the newspapers upon the past session that will bo allowed to deserve some notice. In more than one of the Ministerialist journals we have observed some hostile criticism of the way in which Parliament does its work. The Auckland iS' tar, for example, deals with the end-of-the-session rush. "Not even the best-intentioncd and most conscientious men," it says, "can do justice) to their work in the small hours of the morning after an exhausting day at the end of the heaviest session on record; and to put Bills through ui>der such circumstances is simply to reduce lawmaking to a' farce." This is perfectly true: wo have said the.same thing many times. But the difference between our case and tba-t of our Ministerial contemporaries is that while wo discuss this evil from the beginning to the end of the session, the Ministerialist papers only realise the necessity for protest when protest can have no effect. Next sCV sion, if they adhere to their usual practice, they will not only tolerate the real cause of the bad methods of the House, but will angrily assail anybody who seeks to call attention

to it. Tho-public will remember now, after rapturously eulogising the great policy of the Government during the 1008 election campaign, and vigorously abusing those who, like ourselves, complained of the wastefulness of the Government's administration, the Ministerialist organs, when tho elections were s j«foly over, coolly proceeded to urge the Government to furnish itself with a policy and to do something to reduco the waste in the Civil Service. That was part of their party game, but surely the party game does not require them to abstain, until speech does not matter, from exposing and condemning the Government's plans to sccuro that the greater part of Parliament's work shall be clone in great haste by a reckless and exhausted Legislature.

We are still loft without the missing details—which are really the heart of the matter—of the polling to date in the British general election. The latest available figures at time of_ writing arc to the effect that the Unionists have secured 115 seats, 117 being secured by supporters of the Government (who, it must be supposed, includp Nationalists and Labourites). The Times is quoted as saying that while there are signs of a, move in the right direction the voting is going much as it went in January. At no stage during the January contest was tic total cabled to us standing at 232. But when the total stood at 218 the Unionists held 94 seats, which left them in a minority of 30—Government 124, Unionists 94. It happens, curiously enough, that 04 is oxactly the same proportion of 218 which 273 (the final Unionist strength) is of 670, the total number of seats. Wanting the details, it is impossible to say whether we aro to expect the final result this time to leave the parties'at the same relative strengths—they are almost exactly equal—as at present. Tho cautious comments or tho Times leave it doubtful whether the Unionists may not owe their present position to the fact that tho ground coveied much of the best Unionist territory. It is safe, however, to say that if the Government wins, with the aid of the Labour and Irish parties, it will have nothing like'the majority of January. A small coalition majority will doubtless be considered, and we think rightly considered, a mandate that the extreme programme proposed by the Government shall not be carried into effect. There is already looming large the prospect of still another election, and there can bo little doubt that the result would bo to complete the electorate's conversion to tho side of cautious an'd prudent progress.

In our reference on Monday to tho results of Mr. Hinb's charges we had not space to notice one quite unexpected result that came in an indirect fashion. It will be remembered that various members sought to excuse tho action of Mr.- Kaihau jn connection with petitions on the ground that Mr. Kaihau did not quite understand the proprieties of the matter. Mr. Kaihau himself, in his extraordinary harangue, put forward this plea ; . "Maoris," he said, '"looked_ at things from a different standpoint from Europeans." Dr. Te Rangihiroa, who doubtless felt that ono Maori member should defend another, was more explicit. "As to the charge against Mr. Kaihau," he said, "it was a difficult thing for a Maori member to understand the working of the European mind. . . . There was no law on the Statute Book- which condemned what Mr. Kaihau had done. He had transgressed a system of European ethics." Now, we do not think anybody who gavo any attention to these speeches could have failed to see in them another | strong reason why separate Maori representation should be abolished.. It is really absurd that the government of the nation should be shared by persons whose conception of ethics and of social needs and standards is, on their own showing, directly opposed, in some •important particulars, to that of the community. If Mb. Kaihau, or any other Maori representative, is to be retained as a Maori representing Maoris, with their curious code of ethics, he should obviously be prevented from taking part in any debate or division save those affecting tho Natives. But why should there be separate representation oven of this kind, when even tho laws affecting the .Natives are decided by; the European members? The incident shows, not merely that the Kaihaus should not be permitted to bring their Maori ethics to tho service of the European community, but that they should not appear in Parliament at all save as the representatives of constituencies every vote in which, Maori and -paheha alike, should be on the same level.