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BRAINS IN PARLIAMENT!

In the days when money was no object, anybody was deemed to be fit to spend it; and that circumstance seems to be the only explanation of the fact that, Parliament is almost bankrupt of financial brains. Brain-bankruptcy, it is true, is not, in Parliament, confined to finance. There is hardly any subject on which members habitually present, to the Government and to the country, the sort of constructive criticism that was looked for in the old-time Parliaments. Taking an average, even a good average, the speech of an M.P. shows no spadework, little knowledge of facts, and no grip of the subject; it is a tissue of platitudes and parrot cries, strung together so as to fill several pages of Hansard, but containing nothing that is worth putting in a note-book for future

reference. This sort of camouflage passes muster when the subject is one that lends itself to aimless generalisations, but as finance, is not one of those subjects, financial criticism in Parliament has gradually dropped into abeyance, forsaken for other fields in which mere word-spinning is less unconvincing. Now, however, that the economic side of government and production is uppermost, is it not time that some real economists, a class oE which the country is not destitute, turned their attention to politics? Prior to last election, The Post emphasised the need of new blood in Parliament —of men of personality and calibre. But it is painfully clear that the calibration is low all round, and especially so in finance and economics. Surely the time has arrived when some men of financial and commercial ability may be spared from the business of money-making in order to help in the business of the country.

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Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/EP19220306.2.40

Bibliographic details

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 54, 6 March 1922, Page 6

Word Count
288

BRAINS IN PARLIAMENT! Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 54, 6 March 1922, Page 6

BRAINS IN PARLIAMENT! Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 54, 6 March 1922, Page 6