NO SLIGHT INTENDED

Evening Star, Issue 22575, 17 February 1937, Page 9

NO SLIGHT INTENDED

MEMBER’S ABSENCE FROM ELECTORATE NATIONAL LEADER ANSWERS MR SEMPLE’S COMPLAINT [Psa United Press Association.] MASTERTON, February 16. A brief reply to the complaint by the Minister of Public Works (Mr Semple) that he had been snubbed by the nonattendance of the member for the district (Mr Adam Hamilton) when he visited the Wallace electorate was made by Mr Hamilton when he was interviewed to-day. “ The main answer to the Minister’s complaint,” Mr Hamilton said, “ is that Mr Semple changed his itinerary after his first intimation to me and after 1 had left Invercargill. Mr Semple’s initial intimation to me was that when in Southland he was not going to visit my electorate, and 1 arranged accordingly for_ deputations from my electorate to wait upon him in Invercargill. At the same time I informed him that my electorate desired that he should pay it a visit. I thanked him for agreeing to this suggested change, but it was not till I arrived at Wellington that I learned that he had agreed to spend a day in the Wallace electorate. I immediately wired urgently and arranged an itinerary for aim through Wallace. If he feels slighted by my absence I regret it, because there was no slight intended. Had I known at the beginning that he was going to visit my electorate I might have been able to fit in my arrangements to suit. “ I would like to remind the Minister that we have to make our arrangements ahead as well as he has. I would say further that I have had the privilege and pleasure of accompanying two Ministers, Mr Webb and Mr Fraser, through my electorate when an arrangement was made which was mutually satisfactory. On this occasion, un- 1 fortunately, I had other arrangements that I could not easily alter. Mr Semple says it ig his first experience of this kind, but it is possible that he may have similar experiences _in the future through no fault or desire of a member who is absent. I would very much like to have been present to introduce and explain the objects of the deputations, but I am well aware that the deputations can well put their cases, and I have no doubt they will treat the Minister Vith every courtesy and consideration while he is journeying through Wallace.” REPROOF NOT ACCEPTED INVERCARGILL, February 16. “Mr Semple has eyidently grown tired of acting as a kind of mountebank to the Ministry, and now he seeks further notoriety by_ castigating the Leader of the Opposition and myself for imagined snubs,” said Mr J. Hargest in a statement to-night replying to Mr Semple’s criticism of his absence from his electorate during the Minister’s visit. “ It should be unnecessary for me to say that no snub was intended,” Mr Hargest said. “ The date of the quarterly > meeting of the executive of the National Party was arranged as far hack as November, and when I found that the meeting clashed with Mr Semple’s visit I wrote to him expressing my regret that I would not bo able to accompany him to Stewart Island. I set out the requirements of deputations there, the names of the spokesmen, and my views on each case. This was to give him an opportunity to consult his departmental officers and to enable him to give an intelligent reply. Any person with the first instincts of manliness would have accepted my explanation and not behaved like a petulant child. When it became impossible to attend at Invercargill I

telegraphed Mr W. M. C. Denham, M.P., asking him to take my three deputations, and 1 also telegraphed the leaders of those deputations. I could not do more. “■•The Minister’s references to the duties of members leave me cold. 1 do not accept a reproof from a man whose conception of duty is to race up and down the Dominion hurling vituperation at his political opponents in a way undreamed of by his predecessors of any party. 1 may inform him that a member’s duties do not begin and end with receiving Ministers of the Crown, and that while in Wellington, coincidentally with taking a share in a very important conference, I was able to perform' some service to a considerable number of my constituents. So long as Mr Semple is a Minister and I am a member of Parliament I will be glad to meet him in my electorate with all the courtesy I command, provided there is nothing more important to occupy my attention, but no amount of bombast or bathos on his part will persuade me to submit to his dictation.”