Parliamentary Procedure.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XXXIII, Issue 3388, 2 November 1896, Page 2

Parliamentary Procedure.

Speaking on the Appropriation Bill, Captain Bussell said : —

Somo people believe if we had a single Chamber it might be possible to get the Government to draft Bills so carefully as to be of some use. But so long as we are expected to sit up hour after hour at night, and come early and work till late at nights, it is impossible that we can do the work of legislation properly. What is the great salvation of the American Constitution and democratic liberty ? Not only that they have a House of Representatives and Senate, in the same way as we have our House of Representatives and Legislative Council ; but it may be said they have four branches to their Legislature — the Lower House and the Senate, then they have the Presi dent, with power of veto, and above and beyond them, and better than the whole of them, the judicial authority of the United States— its Supreme Court. It is owing to the power of the judicial authority of the United States that they have a steadfastness and prudence in their legislation that we shall never have under our present Constitution. It is a favourite democratic theory that the popular will of the day shall be the law of to-morrow. But I maintain such should not be the case — that it is in the interests of the people of all classes, it is in the interests of our country that ther* should be every possible check upon hasty legislation ; and, Sir, where we go wrong in our legislation now, and what is the misfortune of this country now, is it not the action of the Legislative Council in Rejecting our hasty and ill-consi-dered experimental measures, but the reason is that a few people think, because there is a breath of popular clamour, that popular clamour should be condensed into a statute, bound up with other equally ill-considered and undigested measures in a large volume, and placed upon the people's shelves the very next week. But such is not the case, to my mind at any rate. There ought to be most grave and careful consideration before the law of the country is altered in any way whatsoever, and instead of popular suffrage sending men who will bring before Parliament illdigested and ill-considered measures, which are passed hurriedly by a Government which has never read them, sketched by a draftsman so overworked that he has not himself time to consider the clauses which he prepares for the Bills, to be hurried up to the Legislative Council, there to receive the Governor's assent and become law, we want representatives who shall recognise the responsibility they are undertaking, and carefully consider the necessity for extreme caution. It would be better for this country if we could not easily pass any important measure into law until it has been two or throe years before Parliament. There would be no loss to the country. The people forget that we pass a volume of statutes year after year. The people do not need them, nor read them, nor care for them ; even Ministers do not understand them ; and yet for some absurd notion, to have some new law for the people, the Government, whose first duty it is to try and aid all sections of the people, think they are called upon to make a fat statute-book if they are to please them. Sir, the sooner we abolish that absurd idea the better ; the sooner we have our laws codified so that all may in some degree understand them; the sooner we come, not to political rest, but into careful political consideration of the futility of now laws to make peoplr prosperous — so that we shall be able to let the people have time to understand the laws we pass, and not go rushing after chimeras which a few agitators desire, and which few people in their heart of hearts want— the better it will be for the country.