THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1405, 3 April 1912, Page 4

THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK.

The great difficulty intho way of comment upon the political outlook is the abnormality of ,tho present situation. Last December an Administration that had been five and a half years in office, as the continuation of an Administration that had begun twenty-one years ago., was sentenced to death by the nation. By a successful use of dishonourable methods it contrived to escape defeat on the floor of the House by the grace of the Speaker's casting vote, and it proceeded to shuffle a new set of honours to the top of its pack, Tho result l is that New Zealand today has a Government which is divided upon every important public issue, and whose leader is known to the people chiefly for his pertinacious and stinging attacks upon the politics and tho principles of three of •his present colleagues and For his lifelong contempt For the very ideas that he is now bound to nurse and to recommend to (lie public. The conntry is governed by a Ministry that has no soul, no unifying principle, no majority, and. so far as anyone can know, no intention of breaking with the unclean policv that is connptod. by lha '/Übsraliam" ugainpt L ffhioh the natioa £sao In rjbeUioa.

four months ago. That is the situation. Dishonour and discredit are in cilice and in power. There are signs already that the new Government hopes that by "lying low and paying nothing" it may make the nation forget Hie realities of the situation. The public knows perfectly well why it turned the Ward Administration out of office: it objected to its evil administration and to its reckless readiness to base its financial and legislative

policy on party exigencies. A writer in the March number of the llnund Tabic, the anonymous quarterly

established in the interests of Imperial self-information and selfunderstanding, lapses into the foolishness of saying that it is "not easy" to describe exactly the issues of the general election "because the lines of demarcation between the policies of the Government and the Opposition arc very hazy." Hazy ! The line between roguery and honesty, between government for a clique and its beneficiaries and government for the nation! It is certainly

true that in the "Liberal" party in Parliament there are men who privately recoil froni the servitude to aggressive Radicalism that is guaranteed by the now Piume Minister's acceptance of office. But there is an unbridgeable gulf between "Liberalism" and the Reform party. They arc at opposite poles on the most important issue for a democratic country in which the State's functions are abnormally large and farreaching. The "Liberals" stand for the retention of the State's powers in the hands of the party in office; the Reform party stands for the separation of the details of government from the working of party politics. Broadly, the "Liberals" arc the defenders of the Spoils system, of the auctioning of government, and the Reformers are the enemies of that gross and unpatriotic conception of public management. The writer in thc_ Hound fable declares also that while the reforms championed by Mi:. Massey would be "of immense value" if faithfully carried out, "it is probably more a steady waning of personal confidence in the leading members of the Government than an ap-

preciation of the importance of these solid points that has swung the pen-

dulum more strongly towards the Opposition than any but the most sanguine of their prophets expected." \

The public's confidence in the memiers of the late Ministry certainly

waned clay by clay; but the verdict of December was not a verdict against Sir. Joseph Ward and Mr. Buddo and Sir John Findlay and the rest of them so much as a verdict against the abominations that had become the political stock-in-trade of the party that they led. At the present moment the Reform sentiment in tho country is keener than ever for the enforcement of its will.

It has seen itself checked by the successful use of methods of political subornation without parallel in the country's history. It has realised its strength, too, for it was almost unorganised for the general .election. Mr. Massey> in an interview which is telegraphed to us through the Press Association from Auckland today, has expressed his satisfaction with the discreditable position in which the Spoils party has lauded itself, and he has spoken of the encouraging signs of the readiness of the Reform party to face another election. That is very satisfactory, but it is the duty of the Parliamentary custodians of the Reform movement to drive well home on the pintform the facts of the present extraordinary and intolerable situation. Mr. Mackenzie and his ■ colleagues arc doubtless hoping that by the sheer force of saying nothing and doing nothing they will reconcile the nation to the acceptance of their government. They hardly dare talk at all, excepting about slot tele?, phones and other routine trifles. But while there is life in the old corrupt machine, there is danger, and tho friends of Reform must be upon their guard; and the Reform leaders cannot better clarify the position' than by conducting a fighting campaign that will simultaneously exhibit tho national benefits that will come of a Reform Administration, and the evils that must flow from the establishment of such a satire upon democratic government as the Mackenzie Ministry as at present constituted. We do not care, personally, what Government is in office so long as we can get those principles established which The Dominion has steadily fought for, and the establishment of which we are glad to think we have helped to bring near. But we cannot regard as anything but the enemy any Ministry tainted by any connection with Wardism.