OLDEST & YOUNGEST MEMBERS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 208, 30 May 1936, Page 15

OLDEST & YOUNGEST MEMBERS

The Legislative Council SOME PERSONALITIES IN POLITICS. (By Oriel.) One would look far to discover a man temperamentally more suited to the leadership of the Legislative Council than the Hon. Mark Fagan. He is perhaps ideally cast. In him are combined gentleness with strength, ami abilityJ;or the job. Moreover, he looks the part. What also is important is that he knows how to keep his head. Self-possession is a perquisite of bard living like mining, where emergencies are in Hie day’s work, if not to-day, then to-morrow. Mr. Fagan was a miner, and is a man of human sympathies, yet not one ■whose heart is prone to take charge of the head. He has the method of the right handling of men —another thing learned in the mines. He has been a leader, a persuader, all his days, lie leads the Council in the true sense of the term. His colleagues on both sides and on top of the political fence would stretch a point for Mr. Fagan, and possibly would vote with him almost to a man if division lists were suppressed and newspaper and Hansard reports were not published. To be sure, there have been moments when he has been goaded to a flaring of the spirit by a handful of the Council who have consistently opposed Labour's legislative programme. But at the moment of the daily adjournments pipes are pulled out, and almost before the veteran Speaker has made his dignified exit, party lines have dissolved in a haze of radical, liberal and conservative smoke. Mr. Fagan is always found in the centre of these amiable informalities, for his pacific principle is, “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” Perhaps that is the secret of his popularity. The Veteran Speaker. Although the Honourable the Speaker, Sir Walter Carncross, has to content himself for the present with 81 years, it is confidently reported in the lobbies that he is the holder of the Empire, if not indeed the,world record in continuity of Parliamentary association. This is his 46tb consecutive year either as a member of Parliament, or of the Legislative Council, and his 18th as its Speaker. His mind is as alert tc-day when he directs the course of a debate as ever it was. Fraillooking, he nevertheless' has unexpected reserves of vitality. Sir Walter recently underwent an operation of a character that would have withdrawn most men of his years from public duty. That was early in the session, and now he is back in his chair, carrying bis record proudly on. Many in the Council have attained their three-score years and . ten. Several glory in four-score years and more. Pride of age reposes in Sir William Hall-Jones, who is in his 86th year. This tine legislator has an honoured record of service to the country in ' many political capacities and many spheres. He was called to the Council in 1913 on the recommendation of the Massey Government. Comparative Youth. At first glance it might appear that the Hon. T. F. Doyle, of Southland, had taken his seat by inadvertence in the Chamber customarily associated with the elder rather than the younger statesmen. He is the youngest member of the Council, and to mention that he is just half as old as the oldest member is not to divulge any real secret. Outwardly he is as incongruous as a Bradman in a game of bowls. But there is wisdom in his utterances, and he is listened to with attention. It is all to the good that comparative youth should collaborate with advancing years in the business of revising the legislation of another place.

Mr. Doyle is not, however, the youngest ever to have been appointed to the Council. That distinction belongs, it is believed, to a .former member, the Hon. J. T. Paul, of Otago, who was only 33 when he took his seat in the Chamber in 1907, and who resigned in 1919 to make a bid, thought unsuccessfully, for a seat in the House of Representatives by contesting Dunedin South.