FOUR-YEAR PARLIAMENT.

Evening Star, Issue 21519, 18 September 1933, Page 1

FOUR-YEAR PARLIAMENT.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—We have just finished a unique election, Wiat of the first woman M.P. in New Zealand, Mrs Elizabeth Reid M‘Combs,, who succeeds her late husband for Lyttelton. Her candidature brought down the _ full debating strength of the Coalition against her. The issue, with a majority of 2,500 votes, is now history. Not yet, however, has the sinister intention of the Government to make the stolen fourth year of 1935 a permanent block of reaction in a cracking-up Constitution been fulfilled. Mr Coates, last of the Coalition orators, brought iu the Fouryear Parliament with odd irrelevance at intervals of the anti-woman campaign. Nor did ho learn from the first experience that, with an intelligent audience, he was handling gunpowder. He did it to the last hour, with increasing disapproval. The intelligentsia began to see method in his madness. He spoke of the thing as if already accomplished." They saw that this is the Coalition method of putting a change in the • Constitution before the country. Statesmen do not introduce constitutional changes that way. Opportunists must introduce them somehow, preferably in one remote constituency a fortnight before they are bludgeoned through over the head of a sleeping country. The first disturbance of triennial polls was carried through that way in twenty-four hours two years and two weeks ago. Now is the turn of the next. Why ? Who wants to leap back into the Middle Ages with a Cabinet that has not much more use for Parliament than Hitler has? Does Otago stand for it? If not, it must speak instantly. The country must speak instantly. It will be too late once the planned-for sitting begins. One does not mend a broken Constitution with glue. Thank heaven, New Zealand’s first woman M.P. did not wait to weigh her words the day before the poll, facing this danger to her country’s liberty. Who stands with her on this matter?—l am, etc., Jessie Mackay. Christchurch, September 16.