PARLIAMENT.

Evening Post, Volume LXVI, Issue 15, 17 July 1903, Page 2

PARLIAMENT.

YESTERDAYS SITTINGS. HOUSE OP REPRESENTATIVES. The House continued its sitting yesterday afternoon. THE ADDRESS-IN-REPLY. Mr. Jennings, speaking on the Address-in-Reply, defended the co-operative sj'stem, which had been started to help that? large body of men who, m consequence of depression that then existed, were not able to help themselves. Though it had its faults he believed the colony had had fair value for the work done, but he considered that such a huge work as the Makohine Viaduct might easily have been •done by contract. These men were the forerunners of settlement, and they deI served more consideration than had been shown to them by some of the speakers during the debate. He denied also that the co-operative lab"<uiers weie u&ed as a voting machine by the Government. He wished they had been so used in his case, but instead of that^ five weeks after his election some 300 men were put on the ■works in his district. He was a believer in the freehold tenure, b.ut he would resist any attempt to alter the present optional system. As 'to Mahuta, he said he knew that person, and if his appointment would have the effect of opening Uf> 'that large tract of country which it 'was expected would' be opened up, the premier had done what would be an excellent thing for the colony. If those expectations were not realised, the pakeha in -that' district was n'otf going to much longer submit to the condition that prevailed in that' district at the present time. Mi. Aitken expressed his regret at the approaching 'departure, of the Governor, whtfp'was so well liked in Wellington. On the "question of our asyiums, he said he visited the Porirua Asylum, and was delighted to find it so well managed and the inmates so well looked after. He found some people there, however, for whonr> l a' home of a ' different sorb ought to be provided. The addition now being made in timber -ought to have been erected in brick, and he also noticed that it was being built on the flattest part of the ground. It should have been put up on a more elevated site. The Minister for Public Works had said it was on sloping ground, but unless his eyes deceived him, the extension was being erected on the flattest portion of ground available. Ha believed in secondary schools and the Universities being as free as primary schools, but '1j.6 pointed out 'that there. might be too many small secondary schools in the country districts, and that it would be cheaper and better to spend the money by establishing larger schools in the centres, and if necessary pay for the board and lodging of country pupils. Again, boys who intended to go in for a business career might spend so much time at a secondary school or a University. Business men did not caro to take into their offices boys over fifteen or sixteen years of age, who were more plastic than young meih of a greater age. He was in favour of unions, but compulsory unionism was quite another matter, and compulsory preference to unionists must mean compulsory unionism. Where would be the preference where every one was a unionist? When every one was a unionist there would be preference for nobody. He suggested that the expenditure on free f telegrams and correspondence is now beyond all bounds, and last year free telegrams represented £27,508, and free correspondence £62,142. There was a necessity for some of that expenditure, but it was much too large a sum, and could very well be reduced by £30,000. He concluded that in addition there were also the "memo." telegrams that Ministers sent out. What that amounted to he could not even guess. The Premier: It 'includes ' Ministerial rnemos. Mr. Aitken : There is no mention of them, at any rate. He went on to urge the setting up of a non-political Board to control the Civil Service, as he thought it w-as a wrong thing to leave the service in the hands of any Government. That system might have failed elsewhere, but it was our proud boast that where others had failed we succeed, and it might be so m this case. He thought it would hays been wiser for the Government to pay more attention, to opening up the Crown lands instead of purchasing private estates. The rich had been made richer, and it was doubtful if the poor would ultimately benefit. Theoretically he did not believe in the freehold, but as it was contended that some things, could be done under freehold that could not be done under leasehold, he believed in the optional system. Without revaluation, the lease-in-perpetuity was worse than the freehold, and if the system was to be continued, ierms of revaluation should be inserted in future leases. Mr. Aitken then went on to refer to the matter of Mirainar. The City Council, he said, had gone to considerable expense and trouble in that matter; there wan no city in the colony so ill-provided with parks and open spaces as Wellington, and he got the option of purchasing 1500 acres of Miramar for the city within a [ certain period. The Bill promoted to enable, the Council to take a vote of the ratepayers on the proposal to borrow the necessary money was not passed by the House, the estate had been sold for a much higher price than it was offered to ithe Council for, and it had gone beyond ! the power of the Council ever to obtain i that property. He could not tell them how sorry he was that the city had lost . ! one of the very best assets that it ever 'had the opportunity of acquiring.- The 'intention was to make the flat into a huge playground, and to lease the slopes for building purposes, and he contended that the city had been done out of the opi portunity of getting a most valuable asset. . t Mr. Field complained that the Government did nob stick to their friends as they ought to do, and that many avowed opponents of the Govfrnment were provided with billets, while Government supporters were walking the streets looking for work. As to Miramar, lie assured Mr. Aitken that he knew the feel- ' ing of the citizens of Wellington well enough to know that if the Bill had net been killed the ratepayers had not sufficient faith in the City Council to have authorised the purchase of the estate. -Regarding the Porirua Trust case, the land concerned in~ which is in his district, he said the judgment of the Privy Council was quite sufficient warrant for them to say that there must be a change in the final Court of Appeal. He thought it should be in England, and -it would probably be found to be the best' thing that it should be a Court of Appeal where Judges from various parts of the Empire whence appeals emanated should sit, but that they shopld be guided in regard to statute law and customs by the Judges from the colony whence the particular appeal emanated. In regard to the Trust itself, he urged that Parliament should bring down legislation dealing with it, and with other trusts in a similar position. As to the land question, he was an ardent freeholder, and strongly against the lease in perpetuity. .He expressed the belief that the Government was not against the freehold tenure, but if it should abolish that tenure he simply could not follow it any longer. He would not think of interfering with present leases in perpetuity, but he I would /do away with it in future, as it was a pernicious system, being extremely beneficial to the tenant and extremely i disadvantageous to the State. He would give every man the right to acquire the . freehold if he ao desired. Ho adversely

criticised the ballot system, which did not work out at all fairly for intending settlers. He blamed the Government for not having purchased land for workmen's homes in the Hutb Valley, and declared that if the land had been bought some years ago, when he brought ll under the notice of the Government, it would not have co&t by one-tenth what it would cost if purchased now. He urged that the Manawatu Railway should have been acquired by the Government under the Act of 1881, and regretted that the Government had given no indication of its intention to acquire that line. In legard to the frozen meafc industry, matteis had very much improved at ♦this end, but the evil at the other end remained much the same, and he thought the Government was to be commended for bringing out the Produce Commissioner to give evidence before a committee of the House to enable Pai-liament to thoroughly understand the position of affairs. On the question of asylums, he said reforms had been urged by the Inspector-General, but very little had been done so far to carry out his recommendations. He (Mr. Field) had last year urged the reforms now pressed on the notice of the Government, and he had also contended that the attendants are overworked and underpaid. He again commended that matter to the notice of the Government. He was extremely disappointed that not a single small farmer had been appointed to the Legislative Council, and in regard to labour legislation he thought we had gone far enough. By giving compulsory preference to unionists they would be going too far, and they should try and devise a scheme under which unionists and non-unionists would receive equally fair treatment. Mr. R. M'Kenzie said he had no faults to find with recent appointments to the Legislative Council. The system was radically wrong — in fact, it was no system at all as far as the electors of the colony were concerned, because they had absolutely no control over the appointments to that body. In a democratic country ,like this we ought to have an elective Legislative Council. As to the land question, he said there was a majority of the House in favour of the freehold with a restricted area, and he advised the town members to fall in with the views of the country members orf that question. Mr. Harding said that railway r^tes I were a disgrace tp the colony, because they advantaged certain, districts. On the Kawakawa section they had to pay 19s or the carriage of 'goods 44 miles i that were carried from Dunedin to Invercargill, a distance of 159 miles, for 18s, while on the Hokitika railway the people got as much beer carried for 8s 6d as the people of Kaipata got for 123 6d. Mr. Buchanan charged the Government with having given the United States great assistance towards accomplishing her desire to dominate the Pacific, because it allowed the Vancouver service to slip through its fingers and gave the San Francisco service over practically to \the United States. He agreed with the cooperative system, but he declared that it was in the administration of that system' by the Government that thousands of pounds had been wasted during the past few yeara. Expenditure was going up by leaps and bounds. Appointments were increasing faster than the revenue. The heads of departments were reduced to mere ciphers. The latest was to prevent any head of a department replying to a communication from a member of Parliament. They could only reply through Ministers, at great delay 'to the enquiring members, as Ministers would not keep abi-easb of their work if they had to do everything. He condemned the Government's appointment of some persons as returning 'officers, and particularly the appointment of the Returning Officer in his district. Polling-booths were withdrawn in outlying -parts- of < his district where they should have been allowed to remain — these places were struck out by some one a day or two before the general election. . A Civil Service Board would sound the deathknell of the political patronage that the Government is using everywhere to the detriment of the service. The Minister for Railways stated that he, as Colonial Secretary, had never received any complaint against the Wairarapa Returning Officer. The Minister for Lands (Hon. T. Duncan) twitted Mr. Buchanan with having had. v » most expensive bridge put up in his electorate by the Government that) he had supported before *he present Government cume into power. (Sir Wm. Russell — That's the same old tale you nave been telling us for the past five years.) As to land settlement, he said the Government had got out of the land purchased for settlement about £90,000 beyond the interest. It was scarcely worth bothering about the freehold or leasehold of the land that in now left. It Was only worth from 10s to £1 an acre, and it would cost £2 or £3 an acre to fell the bush and put it into grubs. But the lease in perpetuity with land for settlement was a different matter ; the land was already prepared for settlement. He complained in this connection that as 4oon as an estate was cut up it was rated by the local bodies on the enhanced value put on it through the subdivision, and those bodies expended no money on it for a year or two, but used the revenue for expenditure in other parts of the district. The Crown lands now fit for settlement only amounted to 5.633,200 acres, and most of it was only second-class land. There was in addition 3,600,000 acres of barren and worthless country. There was now over 2,000,000 'acres of land ojien for selection. During lyo2-03 the land selected was of an §rea of 1,500,000 acres, and under the land for settlements -system 69,442 acres. The total number of selectors on the books of the Department was 19,655. The land revenue totalled £448,380. There was under survey, at the present time 1,424,026 acres of rural Crown land for settlement purposes. As to Mr. Witheford's complaint about land for returned troopers, he said that during the past fifteen months over 900,000 acres of land had been ' opened for settlement in the Auckland district, so that there waa plenty of land for every one. As to the Forestry Department, he said the total number of trees raised to date at the State nurseries was 11,649,423, and there are 7,411,935 trees in the nurseries, valued at over £12,000. The total number of trees planted out to date was 2,908,000. The Government had decided to increase the output from the nurseries, and the Government had decided to sell the trees at 10 per cent, above the cost price. Efforts were being made to discover the class of trees most suitable for the various districts, and a guide book dealing with the subject was being prepared by Mr. Matthews, the Chief Forester. "On the motion of Mr. Graham the debate wa? adjourned till 230 p.m. today, and the House rose at 11.40 p.m.