WEEK IN PARLIAMENT

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 July 1929, Page 3

WEEK IN PARLIAMENT

PERSONALITY IN DEBATE. (Special Correspondent). WELLINGTON, July 27. “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?” These words from the Good Old Book fittingly apply to the Address-in-Reply debate when one looks at it in calm retrospect. Politicians may not be rightly called heathens, at least some of them would doubtless resent the application of that appellation,! but the people are* justly entitled to regard the talk of the past three weeks as a vdin thing. Now that it is all over, what, it may be asked, has been the good of it? Judging from the remarks which one hears from the Man in the Street, that hoary old age who in his wisdom elects members of Parliament, all the talk has been rather futile. The politician, however, proud of the fact that he has .successfully disembowelled Hansard of twenty years or so ago to reveal how his opponent on the other side of the House once said something that he-ought not to have said if he did not want to have it resurrected against him in years to come, feels that he has earned his honorarium, and that his powers of research are stupendous. If a Member of Parliament were sensible, he would keep his own counsel during a session, say nothing, and thus avoid any risk of having his political past . hashed up on'some occasion in the • dim and distant future. This course , of action would be all the more ad- ( visable in view of the uncertainty that he will always remain on one j side of the fence, or even on the ( fence. The trouble about being a j politician in the New Zealand Parlia- } ment is that if one remains in the j middle of the road he may get run ( over, and if he tries to keep on the straight and narrow footpath which should lead to a portfolio he is liable J to get pushed into the gutter where c the dirty waters of criticism flow. r At any rate, the Address-in-Reply debate which concluded this week, J has been remarkable for the quan- . tity of personality which has been in- * dulged in. There .has been banality, cl too, but personality has taken first prize. The Labour Party has been 1 the only one to keep out of danger, 1 but its silence has been strategic and not due to any desire not to unduly S embarrass anybody. a Colonel McDonald, the member for ti Wairarapa, has been the unfortunate target for the shafts of the Reform Party archers. Somebody of course, may have overdone the longbow business, but it was certainly unfortunate for Colonel McDonald that he once belonged to the Labour Party, if only for five minutes. Speaker after speaker lost no chance of indulging in sarcasm at the gallant Colonel’s erstwhile political convolutions, and he could stand it no longer when Mr Wright, the former Minister for Education, set out to educate the House at length on how the Colonel had paid p his subscription to the Labour Party like a man, became a vice-president, wanted to get into Parliament some- 11 how, and then to his horror discov- f l . ered some abominable rule debarring : a person from becoming a Labour t£ candidate for six years because -he has been unwise enough at some time cc or other to oppose a Labour candidate in a Parliamentary contest. Mr Wright “rubbed it in,” and Colonel Sl . McDonald broke out into wrath. pi

“When one looks at the Hon. gentleman’s anatomy” he roared at th© exMinister. But this was too much for Mr Speaker. - ' Apparently fearing that the Colonel was going to draw some sort of anthropological comparison, he cut the Colonel short at the word “anatomy,” and there the', incident closed.

ATMORE V. JONES. The Minister of Education (Mi’ Atmore) and the member for Mid-Can-terbury (Mr Jones.) cannot be regarded as having any sort of affinity or regard for one anbther. For days the House had been waiting for one or other of these members to get up in anticipation of some fireworks. In a sense the two members resembled a cat watching a mouse, and it was a matter of conjecture as to which one would get up on his feet first. If Mr Jones spoke first it could be taken for granted that he would not leave Mr Atmore alone, and vice versa. At length Mr Jones entered into the debate, and in his own inimitable way he described how Mr Atmore would like to 4 ’refer to him. He knew it off by heart. And he got it, when Mr Atmore’s turn came, which was next. A gentle reference to Mr Jones being an “artist in half-truths” broke the ice as it were, and then the Minister, speaking in white heat and at about 250 words or more a minute, animadverted on Mr Jones’s political adventures in sundry electorates in the South Island. Leaving Mi- Jones, Mr Atmore turned his vitriol mn to Mr Coates and seemed to leave >a few marks.

The great event of the week, of course, was the production by the Prime Minister "of a letter from a former supporter of the Reform Party to Mr Coates with reference to the Taupo Railway. It certainly caused a sensation because of its threatening tone, but latqr in the week it turned out that Mr Coates had not been altogether dismayed by his correspondent, so that it is possible the last has been heard of this matter.

Mr Downie Stewart provided the comic turn by sundry allusions to the propensities of Ministers to enjoy themselves at banquets.. It was certainly a clever effort, from Mr Stewart's point of view, and raised a laugh, and even Mr Wilford played up to it in a derogatory way. “I .will say nothing about the cap and. bells speech of the Hon. member fdr Dunedin West,” .paid Mr Wilford, who in so saying said a lot.. Mr Stewart has carefully studied the art of delivering a humorous preamble to a serious speech and it is now becoming a habit with him. He lids done it for years now and for the sake Of preserving the genial atmosphere of Parliament it would be a pity if he allowed himself to do otherwise. The end of the debate was in many respects hectic. Not for years has so much shorthand been written in the Press Gallery. ' There is nothing that the public likes so much as to see somebody being hauled over the coals, and the Wellington public at any rate, has enjoyed its fill. Each night the galleries have been crowded and they have not been sent empty away. The Prime Minister, of course, always draws a Crowd. To those who remember Sir Joseph in days gone by when he was one of the most rapid' of talkers the change which has come I over his style is very noticeable, as he now slowly and with deliberation. His thoughts are connect-]

ed, though, and if anyone attempts to provoke him with an astringent interjection, woe betide him! When moved to anything approaching anger, the spirit of the Sir Joseph of old is roused, and then he does let fly. Sir Joseph’s great time will come in the course of the next three weeks, when he will be replying to the Budget debate, and it can be taken for granted that he will not be disappointing. In many respects this is an interesting Parliament in that it contains so many new members, who, it must be admitted, have not done badly for their first efforts, but the transcendant figure of all is 'that of Sir Joseph Ward, the veteran war horse of many campaigns, and even his opponents on the other side of the House defer to his wishes when he says, “We have talked enough for to-night, let us go home and resume the battle toj-morrow.” The House may not sit such late hours as it was wont to do, but it enjoys the time when its component parts do commingle. After all, politics is but a great game, and though there may be threats and challenges to an election, early or late, those “little cherubs who sit up aloft” know that it is all tosh and that this Parliament will last out its normal course of three years.