SUMMARY DISMISSAL.

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 107, 2 November 1904, Page 4

SUMMARY DISMISSAL.

The Legislative Council is to be congratulated upon the summary, not to say insulting, treatment which it hae administered to the Referendum Bill. If the Bill had only received in the House of Representatives the votes of those members who believed in it, it would never have troubled the Council at all ; but the desire on the part of the people's representatives to pose as democrats and at the same time to evade the responsibility of forming and expressing opinions of their own on thorny questions, secured a large measure of support to a weak and shuffling Bill. The Council, at any rate, is free from the bias of either of these motives, and, undeterred by the Premier's insincere bluster about abolishing an" institution which he has done more than anybody else to degrade, it has risen to the occasion with sriirit and consigned a legislative abortion to "the Parliamentary dustbox," which is much better fitted to receive such rubbish than .the Statute Book. No doubt what particularly inspired members of the House to vote for the Bill was the -wish to e,vade their responsibilities with regard to tho question of religious education in schools, and some of them have given election pledges on the point. But a special referendum under appropriate conditions on that one question is a very different thing from the total revolution, of our constitutional system proposed by the Bill, and the Bible-in-. schools Executive, in advocating so drastic an innovation, to meet a single case, bears far too close a resemblance to the mythical Chinamen who burnt down a house every time they wished to roast a pig. The estimated cost of every referendum or plebiscite under this Bill would have been from £20,000 to £40,000, and its only object' was to get the work done which the people's representatives are already paid £300 a year for doing. By 22 votes to 7 the Council has put its" veto on the costly farce, and the general verdict will be that it has done no better work this session.