LEGISLATIVE WASTE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XXXXI, Issue 70452, 1 October 1900, Page 2

LEGISLATIVE WASTE.

Under the above heading, the Auckland Star truly points out that a feature of the present session is the practice of entering into long discussions on the introduction of a bill — a sheer waste of time-that has been adversely commented on in the House. In view of that and other things, it seems to our contemporary that unless some sweeping reforms are introduced into our Parliamentary system the conduct of the public business must inevitably degenerate, and the sessions of the future be even more prolonged and less productive for their length than those of the past have been. Which is all true. The trouble, however, appears to be the absence of a remedy. Every member thinks his own little measure the most important on the Order Paper, and that impels him to air his views on the subject at considerable length. And as the majority of members have a vague idea that all they were sent to Parliament for was to talk against time, we have a debate of length decidedly disproportionate to the importance of the subject matter. If he picked up Hansard casually, a stranger who was unacquainted with the loquacity of the New Zealand M.P., would for the moment imagine that our legislators had been discussing a measure upon which depended the fate of nations; closer scrutiny would show him that it was, perhaps, some twopenny-halfpenny bill which would barely pass through a respectable lunatic asylum. Every session the same pro* cedure has to be adopted, and forty or fifty bills (of more or less importance) struck off the Order Paper. This is called " The Slaughter of the Innocents," and after the legislative murder the members commence to pack up their portmanteaux, and their hearts go out to their wives and families. Some no doubt feel keenly the untimely fate of their " little bills," but the majority have about this juncture become so homesick and tired of hearing themselves talk that good work could not be expected of them. Towards the end of the session the rule is late hours, for so much time is wasted in the initial stages that overtime has to be worked if anything like a record is to be left on the Statute Book. Then it is that weary members, plodding wearily home- ( ward, in the cool morning air, and listening in a vague, dull way to the ringing announcement by numerous onantioleers that day is at hand, feel that there is no plaoe like home, and that they will not be happy till they get there. It seems a pity that there is no common-sense plan for expediting the work of Parliament. To the ordinary individual it would appear that instead of having all-night sittings (during some of which the majority of members who are present sleep) the House does not commence its work at, say, 9 a.m., and finish at 6 p.m., continuing in session until the work for which they receive £240 per annum to do is done, The present method of doing things is absurd in the extreme. All, or nearly all, the measures which are slain in bulk when the end of the session is drawing nigh have been the cause of much waste of time. They have all, or nearly all, been the subject of some discussion ; many have passed through certain stages, but when it abruptly dawns upon members that they have spent enough time in Wellington the bills are dropped in a hurry, Perhaps this wholesale holocaust to Time may be a blessing in disguise, and that the absence from the Statute Book of some of the murdered bills is a thing which should please rather than depress ; still, on the other hand, it sometimes happens that measures which would prove beneficial are victims in the general massacre. With our Auckland contemporary, wo agree that it is tho work which is thrown away, the work for which the country sees no results whatsoever, that really blocks^ the i Parliamentary machine. . 1