WHOLLY POLITICAL

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 70, 24 March 1931, Page 8

WHOLLY POLITICAL

The Labour Party is quite within its rights in opposing the Finance Bill if it does not approve its provisions, but the stonewalling tactics which have been adopted are a senseless abuse of legislative methods. In many other countries, including Great Britain, there is provision by which such obstruction of legislation is made impossible. The Government of the Day may move to apply the closure. This has the effect of a motion at a public meeting "thai the question be now put."i That motion must be voted on without debate, and if it is carried the question before the House must be taken to the vote at once. But New Zealand has chosen to do without a closure provision,' and has instead relied upon the good sense, of members not to. abuse the freedom of discussion which they enjoy. ■ There lias indeed been little abuse. What has occurred has been chiefly on such social legislation as that touching the licensing and gaming laws when minorities have used this, method to coerce majorities. On such occasions the coercion' has often been successful, as the Government has not been a c keenly N interested party, and has yielded to the demonstration by withdrawing the Bills from the House. On this occasion the Government is vitally interested It can on no account yield to force such as the Labour Party is endeavouring to employ. That would be surrender. It can listen 'to reason, and it has listened to such reason as the members of the Labour .Par ty can adduce on the second reading. Twenty members, with occasional assistance from Independents and others, took full advantage,of their right to speak,for half an hour on the second reading and on amendments thereto.,. They were unable to convince the House that jhe Bill should be rejected as a whole; It can be amended now, if grounds for amendment are shown, only when the particular clauses are under consideration in committee. For all practical purposes, therefore, the House should take the clauses as quickly as possible. But this is not what Labour desires. With no hope of rejecting the Bill it isxstill persisting in obstructive tactics. The fact is that Labour's purpose in adopting obstructive tactics is wholly political. The sincerity of the party in opposing the Bill on the second reading, and again in committee, may be conceded; but in carrying this opposition to the stoneyralling length Labour is seeking only to make a demonstration for political ends. When the General Election is held Labour will make the claim to unionists and Pullic servants that it is/their protector. "Twenty of us," the Labour candidates will say, "fought the Bill for forty hours (or for so long as the stonewall can be maintained). Had there been forty of us we could have defeated it." The stonewall, in fact, is just what die Americans would call the band-wagon, making a noise before the Election. It cannot succeed in Parliament, but it may delude the electors afterwards. But in adopting such methods Labour is attempting to undermine the democratic principle to which it pays lipservice—the principle that the majority shall rule—and to substitute for majority rule-dictation by a talkative coercive minority. ''The Department appears to regard assembly halls as a luxury which can be done without, but with a school like this, of 1100 pupils,', it is disastrous that they cannot be gathered together in one place so that the Director can address them," said Mr. W H. Bennett, chairman of the Board of Governors of-the Wellington Technical College, at the board's monthl/ meeting last night. Mr. Bennett was reporting on the outcome of a deputation to the Minister of Education, ask-. ing for a pound for pound subsidy towards the cost of erecting an assembly hall at the college. The s board had offered to provide £5000 towards the cost, said Mr. Bennett, but the Government could not see its way to grant the subsidy, although itwas stated that there was no objection to the ■■board's proceeding with the work at its own expense.; The board would have to decide whether as much as possible of the work should be done with the funds in hand, and the completion left until the Government had the necessary, money, or whether the building of the hall should be postponed. The Minister had also been approached with regard to the completing of the arts wing, a matter which was Tegarded in a different light from the assembly hall. The board had been given authority to hay« estimate* for this, work prepared, f ' ■'