WASHING UP

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 19, 22 July 1925, Page 7

WASHING UP

NEW PROCEDURE PROPOSED

LOOAL LEGISLATION IN PARLIAMENT.

The object of the Local Legislation Bill introduced in Parliament is to provide a method by which ratepayers and all other persons interested may have full prior information both as to the purpose of proposed minor local legislation and as to the actual legislative method by whioh effect is to be given to such proposals. >

The process adopted in recent years, ■by whioh a mass of minor local legisla' tion is collated and passed by Parliament at the end of eaoh session in the Reserves and other Lands Disposal and Public Bodies Empowering (a Washing Up) Act, has been substituted for the method of former years under which each local authority proposing legislation was required to promote a separata looal bill dealing with its own subjectmatter, in which cases the Standing Orders of both Houses provided for ample public information by advertisement and the deposit of the Bill In the locality affected. It has been found in practice that especially towards the end of the session, demand is made for the insertion in the Washing Up Bill of an.extraordinary number of clauses, each dealing with, an independent subjectmatter, which are presented to Parliament in one or moTe masses at a time of the session when it is impossible for each clause to receive careful considertion by a special committee, and when Parliament itself is forced to rely largely upon the responsibility of the Government which has accepted the clauses for insertion in the Bill.

By proposed method it is intended to obviate the process, which has been tested and found unsatisfactory, partly because of the want of reference to a special- committee with full time and ■ opportunity for consideration of the effect and the details of each proposed clause, partly because members of Parliament have not themselves sufficient opportunity to consider each clause in all its aspects, and partly because tho ratepayers and persons in the locality affected have in many eases no notice of tho intention of a clause, and, even where they have knowledge of the intention, have no notice of the language in which that intention is to be carried into effect. A local authority desiring specific empowering- legislation on its behalf is required to submit its proposals in a concrete form to the Minister of Internal Affairs for consideration by the Government. If the Minister is satisfied that the proposal is one which should properly. be submitted to Parliament he publishes in the "Gazette" a notice to that effect, together with' a copy of the clause, thus enabling 1 all persons locally interested in the proposed legislation to become acquainted with the proposals for a sufficient time before Parliament deals with the subject, and also enabling objectors to prasent any objections for consideration by a Committee of Parliament. Under the Bill the Government assumes the same responsibility for Departmental inquiry and investigation before the submission to Parliament of a local proposal,. but ensures to tho public and to Parliament the full opportunity, which is wanting under the present method, of consideration of, and, if necessary, objection to, the proposal before its final confirmation by Parliament.