PRESTIGE LOST

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 135, 5 December 1944, Page 4

PRESTIGE LOST

FEDERAL PARLIAMENT

AUSTRALIAN BAD MANNERS

(Special P.A. Correspondent.) Rec. 9.45 a.m. SYDNEY, Dec. 5. The session of the Federal Parliament which has just ended has been described as "One of the worstmannered for many years—with party feeling never higher and personal abuse never lower."

The conduct and sudden termination of the session have been stringently criticised. "The decay of manners in the House must disturb every thoughtful member," said the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. R. G. Menzies. "There is plenty of room within the limits of decency and good manners for hard hitting and vigorous debate." [Mr. Menzies had been described by the Minister of Information, Mr. A. Calwell, as a /.'gutless wonder," and two Labour Senators referred to each other as a "sewer."] "The session could not have been a < worse example of sheer carelessness of | Parliamentary prestige, power, and dignity," comments the "Sydney Sun" editorially. i The paper adds: "One of the charges brought. occasionally by politicians aaginst the Press is that it attacks the i dignity of Parliament. The worst enemies of the dignity of Parliament are those within it. "If Parliament demands respect it must show the people that their representatives are more eager to carry out their duties than to catch weekend trains and must conduct its debates fairly and fully without venom, intolerance, and insult." GOVERNMENT'S ATTITUDE. "The attitude of the Government to Parliament is one of impatience, if not actual contempt," said Mr. Menzies, declaring that the debate on several important matters had been restricted. The House of Representatives had sat on only 57 days this year. In the more than three years of office'of the Curtin Government it had sat on only 156 days—including 48 in 1943 and 45 in 1942. [This compares with 43 in 1940, the only war year in which the Menzies Government had continuity of office. In 1915 Parliament sat on only 33 days—record low.] "Unless Mr. Curtin, on his return to duty, can halt the present trend, the writing is on the wall for the Government," says the "Sydney Morning Herald's" political correspondent. He adds, "Few of the Ministers at present on deck have enough political insight to realise how far and how fast the Government is drifting from the country's favour." The writer declares that the support of the Victorian Independent, Mr. Coles, for last week's censure motion was highly significant. Mr. Coles, whose vote kept Mr. Curtin in office in the last Parliament, is described as having "proved himself over and over again an efficient oneman super-Gallup poll of floating public opinion—what he thinks on Parliamentary subjects the non-party voters who make and break Governments are also thinking."