MORE COUNCIL APPOINTMENTS?

Evening Post, Volume LII, Issue 1170, 9 December 1896, Page 4

MORE COUNCIL APPOINTMENTS?

A politician of the Party has stated that the Premier intends to ask His Excellency the Governor to appoint four more Legislative Councillors. It can be easily understood that 'Mr. Seddon has indirectly promised an even larger number of aspiring followers the distinction that belongs to the Senate, and that he is quite ready to tender the advice with which he is credited inside the ranks of his own Party. There can, however, be no valid reason for any such proposal, while the actual cause is doubtless the obligation to reward political service, rendered for the most part during the rdeeht elections. Hitherto, it lias beetf supposed that the Council should not exceed half the number of the House of Representatives. There are 74. members in the House, and 44 members in the Council. tTpon this basis, then, the Upper House has

already an excess in numbers. It is not a 3*eai sinre four new Councillors were appointed, and in 1893 twelve new members were appointed. As the tenure of such members is seven years, the country can well afford te wait for some years before there are further additions, particularly as the cost of each member may be set down at £150 per annum. The Council is supposed to be a revising chamber, and if these new appointments are to be -made because of the reproach of the Premier that it has rejected measures passed: by the House, he would seem to aim at making tlie Council merely a registering machine for anything he may permit to pass elsewhere. .As a matter of fact, the Council has erred in passing important Bills that should have been referred to the people for consideration. The Premier is opposed to the Council as a revising chamber, and unless he can reform it upon lines that will give him the hope of dominating it, he will do liis utmost to reduce it to a costly nullit}'. Before any new appointments of the kind are made the whole question of the constitution of the Council should be considered. It is a question whether the nominee system should not be abolished, and the elective system be introduced. Were this done the Council might become a proper reflex of the countrj', and not a place for the reward of political nonentities on the " spoils to the victors" system, as it is at the present time. In any case there are ' no legitimate vacancies at present, and to appoint more members now would be a flagrant breach of Constitutional usage.