WELLINGTON TOPICS

Hokitika Guardian, 26 May 1933, Page 3

WELLINGTON TOPICS

after thirty-two years. THREE MINISTERS.'• (Special to “Guardian.”! WELLINGTON, May 23. In its leading columns the other day the Wellington morning paper : drew the attention of. jts readers to Abe fact that-, as a result of tbe : New 'South Wales, rc-ferendunij New Zealand is new ,t,hc only British, community in the Southern Hemisphere, to retain the nominative system of appointments to the Legislative Council... In th.p, j Upper House of the Federal. Parliament, and in all the States, except Queensland, where there, is. no secondchamber, members are elected. T-liis information is not particularly nevv or especially astounding, but the local daily turns it to interesting account. “Tiie reform of the Upeji-r House in New Zealand,” it says, “was one of the planks of the Reform Party, adopted in the light cf certain abuses perpetrated by previous Governments in making .appointments for paity purposes.” This authority proclaims that .in 1912, presumably after Mr Massey bad assumed office, Parliament resolved that Legislative Councillors should be appointed by the diiect vote of the electors.

TWO YEARS LATER. Then there appears to have been : a hiatus of some Kind or another. Two years later, however, the Massey Government introduced a Legislative Conn, oil Bill. “The measure was .passed,” the public is told, “providing for the division of the country into four I electoral divisions, two of which were each to elect seven -Councillors and the other two- livq each, a total of VI, tin the,-p:efer-e-utial. system of voting, at ever,- second general election. Nothing furtlmr was clone until 1918 when it was provided .by an Amending Act that the . new system was to come into operation ’on a date to be fixed by proclamation. A proclamation was actually gazetted fixing the date ibi" January 8, 1920', but further, amending legislation deferred the proclamation, to an indefinite date in the future. And that is the end of the story.” Rut the story did not end there,. It has not,, indeed, yet ended. 'Tlie • Legislative .Council Act still remains on the Statute Rook, and .may be put into -operation by proclamation at ,f.ny time by - /an aspiring Government.

watting. ,

Meanwhile, , Van Act to alter the Constitution and to . define certain povitodj ipf- tlie” "Legislative .Council” remains, as just stated, on the.. Statute •Bx)kj and any day may : be “'called into operation -by His Excellency the Governor at the request of his duly established advisers. It is popularly supposedthat the Act has been held in suspense during the i last eighteen or nineteen years rather by the general reg.prd for Sir Francis Bell,- its framer, than by any conception that it ever will figure in the Constitution of the Dominion. “The present time,” says the authority already quoted, ; “is very favourable! for reconsideration of the whole question for the personnel of the Legislative Council has become, soreduced in number, that it Could lie reconstituted with a minimum of distu'ijbnlnce. Political rnisdo-m' suggests that the influence and prestige of the Council should Us raised by making it answerable to sane li'epfcsentati.veprinciple.” The fruit of this scheme would rest with the character of the I representative principle applied. *