MEMBERS RESTIVE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 30 August 1924, Page 5

MEMBERS RESTIVE.

PUBLIC SERVICE GRIEVANCES

(Bv Telegraph.—Special to the Star.) PARLIAMENT, Aug. 29.

Parliament has had more than the normal amount of its time taken up this session in discussing the public service pay and conditions. The topic was uppermost during the discussion on the post and telegraph estimates, and Mr. Rolleston (Waitomo) asked if it could be possible to relieve Parliament of the continual discussions and recrimination over public servants. If various associations could not make an agreement with a department or Minister this dispute should be referred to an independent tribunal.

Mr. Nosworthy, Minister for Agriculture, made another suggestion. Outside workers were getting tired of public service grievances, he said, and the time would come when State employees would be allocated one or two members to represent them in Parliament. Then these members could talk away about their grievances and the rest of the members would go outside. The public servants, concluded Mr. Nosworthy, were well paid and cared for. If they were dissatisfied they could always get out, but it was no use threatening the Government. Mr. Forbes, the next Liberal speaker, suggested that the majority of members, certainly most of the taxpayers, had a sense of justice in regard to the public service, and would "not approve of the Government’s policy of putting on the big boot. The Premier, after a couple of hours discussion on these lines indignantly declared that members of the Opposition would sell their political souls for public sendee votes Every time the House dealt with the estimates the votes of the service seemed to be put up for auction. This sort of thing was neither straight nor decent. He appealed to the Opposition members to stop this nonsense. Mr. Holland: Don't look at me • I ia »™ n spoken. (Laughter). ’’ J* r( \ mier re P ,sed tlmt he was afraid the lion, gentleman had "sooled tnem on.