EDUCATION PORTFOLIO

Evening Star, Issue 21220, 29 September 1932, Page 2

EDUCATION PORTFOLIO

UPPER HOUSE TENURE UNDEMOCRATIC MR KYLE RENEWS ATTACK [From Our Parliamentary Reporter.! WELLINGTON, September 28. The action of the Government, in giving the portfolio of Education to Mr Masters, a member of the Upper House, was strongly assailed in the House of Representatives to-night by Mr Kyle, who declared that, so long as the system which permitted this existed, there would bo no true democracy in the dominion.

Mr Kyle devoted the whole of his half-hour speech on the Address-in-Reply to the school hook contract, and announced that ho had some information to give the Minister of Education. When a Labour intcrjector asked: Where is he? “He is not hero,” Mi' Kyle replied. “J am going to raise that constitutional point.”

Mr Samuel: Be careful. You may be asked to resign. “The Minister may be in a safe place,” said Mr Kyle, “but as a responsible Minister he must be open to criticism.” Mr Kyle went on to say that ho had always been in favour of an elective Upper House, and no man outside the House of Representatives should hold the Education portfolio, with a spending power of £4,000,000. Under the present system there was nothing to stop the Government from appointing an outsider to the Upper House one day and next day giving him a portfolio. The Coalition Government had been formed to advance the interests of the whole dominion, and not the personal ambition of any one person. Mr Kyle said he was aware that in days gone by there had been an At-torney-General in the Upper House.

Voice: We had a Minister of Education in tho Legislative Council before this.

Mr Kyle replied that in 1903 Mr Walker, one of the greatest educationists in the dominion, held the portfolio while a member of the Upper House, but the adverse criticism was so strong that he had to be relieved of the portfolio.

Mr Lee: Why don’t you do that, too?

Mr Kyle said the present position had been described in newspapers as a scandal. He did not wish to attack the Minister personally, but it must be remembered that the Minister was a defeated candidate. Like Education, the secondary industries of the dominion were not represented in the Lower House, for Mr Masters also held that portfolio. “I was asked in Christchurch what I would do,” said Mr Kyle. “I said I was willing to stand to my convictions and vote him out. The principle is wrong entirely. It is all very well to have commissions and Ministers recommending economies, but when the crucial test comes it is the members of this House who have to vote one way or the other.”