"MORE BEHIND IT."

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 101, 26 October 1932, Page 10

"MORE BEHIND IT."

There was more behind the Press attack; the aim seemed to be to discredit Parliament as an institution in the eyes of/ the people and make it easy to pave the way to a dictatorship. Apparently government by commission was aimed at, instead of government by the elective representatives of the people. He hardly thought that some of the bigger newspaper editors engaged in the attack realised the serious course they were encouraging. He supposed they were annoyed aitd hurt when they were thwarted in their aims and ambitions.. Parliament was the instrument of time; it was an imperfect instrument, and certainly called for improvement, but it was the one safeguard the people had against unbridled autocracy and tyrannical forms of government. "We as representatives have no intention of handing over' the government of the country to the co-called 'fourth estate,'" he said; The tendency was'to lay the whole blame of the state of the country on the shoulders of Parliament aa an Institution; that attitude was dangerous and entirely wrong. Mr. Barnard said he supposed that some of the papers would like to see in practice in New Zealand methods adopted in America, where in some of the States the powers of Parliament had been seriously whittled down and the way made open for private enterprise. That easily degenerated into graft and corruption. Surely the newspapers of New Zealand were alive to the _ obvious effects of that state, of affairs and did not want such a practice to grow up in the Dominion.