DOMINION PARLIAMENT

Hawera Star, Volume XLIX, 21 January 1930, Page 5

DOMINION PARLIAMENT

EARLY SESSION PROBABLE PRIME MINISTER’S PLANS DOMING IMPERIAL CONFERENCE-. (By Telegraph—Special to “The Star.”) WELLINGTON, Jan. 21. To-day tTu<ai-uvy) tine Prime Minister (Sir J osepn Ward) leaves Wellington ior Rotorua. Jtte has sufficiently recovered his physical! strength. x<t move about and' his main concern, now is to get treatment for the muscles ot Lis legs, which have given considerable trouble. He- anticipates that with massage treatment and baths his vigour will be fully restored, and that lie will be able to take his usual active pant in the administration.

For several weeks the Prims Minister,' in his Hcretaunga house, i:as been daily receiving a large number of visitors, moulding his departmental heads and members of the Cabinet, and there is a very optimistic ice ling regarding liis ability to make a good recovery. Such a happy event wi'il have immediate 'political results of high importance.

It is generally known that fbe next meeting of -the Imperial Conference takes place this year, and that the date has been -tentatively fixed for June. Therefore, it may bo .ak-;-n for granted tlrat with improved health Sir o'-oil Ward’s plans will provide for calling Parliament at' an early date, ‘probably in February, for a short session devoted mainly to finance and designed! to bridge the gap between the (usual date for the session’s opening;, which is at the end of June, andi enabling the ordinary ousiness meeting of Parliament to commence in August. Sir Joseph. Ward’s re-appearance at an Imperial Conference will create an interesting Imperial record, for if he attends the 1930 gathering of Prime Ministers it will be- his thirteenth appearance at an occasion of that kind. He was Prime Minister when he at- . tended his tenth Imperial Conference in 1911. and he accompanied the late Mr \V. F. Massey tais a member of the War Coalition Government to the Imperial War Cabinet meetings in 1916 and l to the Peace Conference of 1919.

As a member of the Imperial Conference of 1911 the present Prime Minister introduced! his scheme for an Imperial Council. It was not adopted, principally owing to the fear that such an organisation would overlap the directly representative Parliaments of the Empire. Sir Joseph, however, contended that he never contemplated the possibility of his plan being accepted as an organised system, but that it affirmed the necessity of an Imperial organisation, particularly for defence events. To a great extent liis attitude was justified because effective Imperial co-operation for the use of navies of the Empire under one command in time of war was evolved long before stern necessity required l this plan, while an Imperial War Cabinet representative of all parts of the Emnire was called together during the Great War, New Zealand’s representatives being the former Prime Minister, Mr Massey, and bis colleague in the National Government, Sir Joseph Ward.