The Evening Star FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 1935. THE NEW ZEALANDERS.

Evening Star, Issue 21931, 18 January 1935, Page 8

The Evening Star FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 1935. THE NEW ZEALANDERS.

Some one has called New Zealanders the most complacent people who could be imagined. Nevertheless, there are, and have been, individuals among us who try to upset our complacency from time to time. Dr Condliffe, in his ‘ New Zealand in the Making,’ was one of them. Mr Leicester Webb, described as a Christchurch lecturer on political science, is another. At the Science Congress in Melbourne, Mr Webb has been revealing some of the defects of New Zealand politicians. He stated that in the last fifty years the average age of politicians had increased .beyond fifty, and the standard of education had fallen. Professional men had decreased. If vacancies in the New Zealand Cabinet were advertised they would read; “Wanted, a Cabinet Minister. Preference given to small farmers over sixty. Education above the elementary stage a disadvantage.” The criticism is no new one. Lord Bryce, who had qualifications to’be a critic, made it fourteen years ago in his ‘ Modern Democracies, when he wrote: “ The House of Representatives is in one sense too representative, for its members are little above the average of their electors in knowledge or ability. That average is no doubt high, but nearly all my New Zealand imformants declared that the quality of the legislature, instead of rising with the growth of the country, .had declined during the past thirty years, and that the debates were now on a, lower level than in the days of Sir Harry Atkinson.” They have been declaring it ever since, and certainly if one reads Hansard at the time when the provinces were abolished, or even when the old age pensions were first established, and again to-day, a vast difference in the level of debates, in the knowledge (including knowledge of history) and variety of mind and eloquence brought to bear on .them, must be acknowledged. The first shock of surprise to any intelligent visitor listening to debates to-day would be that Mr Downie Stewart should be out of the country’s Cabinet and some Ministers in it.

The doubt must be felt whether it is not a weakness of democracy not to desire representatives, as a general rule, who are too much above its own level, but to prefer those who may more easily be led and controlled. When the voters gibe at their own selection they are too apt to overdo the disparagement, and to conclude that the members they have chosen are below their own average, which is not the case. Mr Webb ascribes the fall in the quality of Parliament: to the insecurity of political life, dependence on party support, and decline of the part which Parliament plays in go\einment. But political life has been always insecure. More probable explanations are those which Lord Bryce suggested, that the electorate expects too much of its representatives when it makes them the slaves of their consituents, and that other careers are more attractive. There is no surety, moreover, that the man of superior talents, combined with the necessary character, even if he stands, will be elected. If small farmers, predominate in Cabinets this is a farming country, and it is only slowly, however surely, that farming is becoming an intellectual calling. , So far as the towns are concerned there is great need for educating the voters, so that they will look beyond the most superficial qualities, which may be even qualities to avoid. Some defects are being amended by time. It would be less easy for Mr Sidney Webb (Lord Passfield) to say now, as he did many years ago, with endorsement from Mr Audio Siegfried: “What is more serious is the absence throughout the colony of serious economic study, of scientific investigation of those industrial and social problems which the politicians themselves attempt to solve.” The politicians, in these days of increased trials, have not scorned to take advice from tli© expert economists. They will do wisely to lean on them without leaning too much. We have outgrown an acerbity in public life which made the old-time politician “ strike to kill ”

when he struck at an opponent, and led later to much waste of valuable time when the chief diversion of each political party Jay in heaving chunks from ancient Hansards at the other, in the hopes of demolishing it with its inconsistencies. The. giants of the past made their own mistakes. Half of them were wrong if half were right when they argued for and against the continuance of the provincial system, and when that system was abolished they abolished it too thoroughly. Parliament will do well enough to-day if the best men are chosen, without too much regard for parties, and encouraged to think out problems for. themselves without too much dependence on leaders, who, like them, must ho fallible.