SESSION NEARING END

Evening Star, Issue 22350, 28 May 1936, Page 7

SESSION NEARING END

BREECH EXPECTED FRIDAY WEEK IMPORTANT MEASURES TO COME [From Our Parliamentary Reporter.] WELLINGTON, May 27. Friday week is expected to be the final date of the present session of 1 arliament, proceedings then to bo adjourned for at least a month, giving the. Government further opportunity or completing the additional items of its legislative plans, which will include some measures it would have preferred to include in the Prime Minister’s current programme of “ first things first. The Parliamentary Law Drafting Office has been particularly hard worked for over two months, because it has not boon merely employed devising amendment to existing statutes, but framing entirely new legislative departures, which require most careful scrutiny if the resultant Acts are not to bo subsequently found defective. This responsible duty cannot bo hurried, as Ministers frankly admit; consequently the most optimistic Labour supporters may be disappointed over the first fruits of the Government’s first session, though they constitute the largest collection of innovating statutes for a generation. The Order Paper of the House of Representatives was almost cleared tonight except for the Shops and Offices Bill, then under discussion, and several minor Bills intended for circulation but not immediate attention. However, additional items to he handled before the end of the present session comprise the Mortgage Corporation Amendment, reconstituting this organisation on the lines of the former State Advances Office; a measure providing for the adjustment of mortgage obligations in line with tho guaranteed prices of dairy produce; another protecting tenants from rising rents; and finally an omnibus measure under tho title of the Finance Bill, its most interesting probable features being authorisation of the restoration of Public Service salary cuts and adjustment of several pensions anomalies, leaving for the future the general question of raising tho pensions standard.