PARLIAMENT’S WORK

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 145, 16 March 1931, Page 8

PARLIAMENT’S WORK

Parties Marshalled DELAY BY LABOUR Hard Fight in Prospect OPENING MANOEUVRES (BY OUR GALLERY REPRESENTATIVE). The first three days of the special session of Parliament have provided the Prime Minister with both a disappointment and a gratification. He has been frustrated in his desire to dam the spate of rhetoric that usually marks the Ad-dress-in-Reply debate, but he has survived the Labour Party’s no-confidence amendment with the help of the Oppo--Bititnis of passing interest that the Labour Party was the source of Air. Forbes’s gratification as well as his disappointment. . There was a touch of the humorous in Air. H. E. Holland s anxiety to move his no-confidence amendment on the afternoon the House assembled. In doing so he terminated his party’s support for the Government after having kept it in office for almost two and A half years, and, in addition, he served to rearrange the political forces in the House in such a manner that his own party lost whatever effective power it had. Incidentally he cleared the atmosphere by securing a definition of party alignments and revealed roughly what Air. Forbes can expect in the way of opposition during what is certain to be a highly interesting session. Uselessness of Delay. Some of the most important proposals to be considered by Parliament for many years are awaiting decision as soon as the Address-in-Reply debate is finished. It was the Prime Alinister's hope that it could be ended by Friday so that the real business could be started to-day. At any time this debate serves little or no useful purpose. It is usually built up by members who deluge the pages of Hansard' with generalities and statements that should obviously be made from an electioneering platform. Why it should be prolonged during a session whose specific purpose is to deal with clear-cut issues is difficult to understand. The Leader of the Opposition, Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates, has made a generous offer to help rather than to hinder the Prime Minister. He has reserved his party’s right to criticise and improve where necessary, but whatever opposition is to be offered is to be deferred until the Government’s proposals are brought down in the shape of Bills. With a clear definition of the Labour Party’s attitude by Mr. Holland, it ■would seem that no useful purpose can be served by preventing tho House getting "down to detailed legislation. There have been 27 speakers in the debate so far, and 17 have been Labour members. Not one has carried matters further than did' Air. Holland in his Town Hall address on Wednesday and his speech in the House the next afternoon. He has set the tune, but the variations by his party members have been singularly barren of originality. To the Labour Party Is conceded the right to explore every legitimate means in its power to try to amend the Government’s wage-reducing proposals—as it intends to do—but the exercising of this right to delay the harmless Address-in-Reply motion would seem to be but a useless prolonging of the emergency session. Labour’s Tone Changes. The division on Air. Holland’s no-con-fidence amendment was reached on Friday evening, when it was defeated by 50 votes to 20, Labour members being its only supporters. It was quite clear from this that the large majority of the House was willing to defer its opposition until the right time. There is certain to be a division of opinion among the Independents and some others upon one or two points, but as Mr. J. T. Hogan, Independent member for Rangitikei, agreed, there is time enough for that to be shown. Up to the time of the division the tone of the Labour speeches was fairly restrained, but it became sharper after Air. J. AlcCombs, Lyttelton, moved a second amendment, which asserted that the wage-reducing proposals touched upon in the Speech from the Throne were inequitable. There is a suggestion that this will not be the last Labour amendment to the Address-in-Reply, the idea being, it is said, that the party is determined to test the feeling of the House upon a series of alternatives. Quite apart from this it is already clear that the session will last much longer than the three weeks hoped for by Air. Forbes. In any case Air. Forbes is determined to work the House hard. The Standing Orders relative to hours have temporarily gone by the board, and sittings are to extend to midnight from Alonday to Friday and until 1 p.m. on Saturdays. Air. Forbes appears to bo in no mood to suffer unnecessary delay, especially since his views in this respect have the endorsement of a large majority, and should he ask for urgency on the Address-in-Reply, some all-night sittings can be expected. As the Labour Party intends to obstruct the wage-reducing measure, urgency for this will no doubt be resorted to in the end. Wider Legislative Scope. There is an opinion in the House that the Government should not confine its legislation to specific questions of taxation, wages, and earthquake relief, but that it should this session go fully into the economics of farming so closely related to the present national financial situation. This view has been advanced by Air. D. Jones (Ref., Alid-Canterbury), and the urgency of the problem has been emphasised by Mr. Coates. Air. Forbes has certainly replied to Air. K. S. Williams (Ref., Bay of Plenty), that he intends to bring down legislation to safeguard mortgagors. This question is of great moment to farmers, but some members incline to the view that the Government should go even further in assisting farmers through their troubles. Air. Coates was the first to raise the point, and he snid he did not consider the Government bad gone far enough in this respect. , , One of the outstanding events of the Parliamentary week was the Labour unions’ demonstration outside the House when Air. Forbes faced a jeering crowd of several thousand and refused to deviate from his declared wages policy. His uncompromising attitude earned a warm compliment from Afr. W. Nash (Lab., Hutt), in that Air. Forbes did not flinch from conveying a mesage to the crowd that could not have been palatable to lt 'The House is to meet at 2.30 this afternoon. Mr. McCombs’s amendment will be further discussed.