"NO FEAR OF NOVELTY"

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 116, 19 May 1941, Page 6

"NO FEAR OF NOVELTY"

N.Z. TRADITION

POST-WAR LEGISLATION

In the February number of the longestablished journal issued by the Society of Comparative Legislation, London, first place in the contents is given to an article "One Hundred Years of Legislative Development in New Zealand," contributed by New Zealand's Attorney-General and Minister of Justice (Mr. Mason).

The article, as its title implies, is a survey of legislative enactments from early times to the present day, and concludes with some observations ah likely requirements for the future. Referring to the effects of the war, MrMason states that many of the plans the Government had made had had to be temporarily set aside.

"The problem of prosecuting and financing the war is now paramount," the article continues, "and Parliament and people are disinclined to bother with legislation or with any other activity that is not directly related to this end. Attention fs, however, being directed towards the grave economic and. social problems that New Zealand, like every other country, will face after the war.

"It is most improbable that the measures which produced prosperity in New Zealand in the past, even in recent years, will succeed in the shattered and transformed post-war world; but. whatever Government is in power, all the evidence of history shows that New Zealand will face her difficulties in a courageous and imaginative man-

"There have been differences between parties in the past, and there will be differences in the future, but they are largely differences as to detail. The vast majority of people ?n New Zealand are agreed on the ends to be attained—socially, politically, and economically. There are often disputes, and violent disputes, as to the rate of social progress, but none as to the direction; and when society, in the course of that progress, whether it is at the time slow or fast, encounters an obstacle, some means Will be found of circumventing, surmounting, or demolishing it, as is shown by the number of the Acts mentioned above which are now commonplace throughout the world, but which originated, under all kinds of Governments, in New Zealand.

"New Zealanders have no fear of novelty, and if they have a tradition it is the tradition of experiment."