THE BUTCHERY BUSINESS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CVIII, Issue 12935, 1 October 1902, Page 6

THE BUTCHERY BUSINESS.

Thirteen more sheep and lambs were led yesterday to the slaughter, when the caucus of Liberal members decided what Bills should be discharged from the Order Paper. Parliament has become callous about this annual butchery, and men. who would' hesitate to crush a spider lay their hands freely in the gore of Bills with hardly a thought for the consequences. There are reasons, doubtless good and sufficient in the ©yes of members of Parliament, why a number of sane and serious proposals should be set aside year after year without coming before either House, hut the public’have never been able to understand Less time has been wasted this session than is usual in the third session of,a Parliament, hut it cannot be claimed that a fair years world has been done. Members ought to settle down to business as soon as) Parliament meets, and should remain in Wellington until they have disposed of the whole programme submitted to them; but year after year we have to make this same protest about their outrageous haste to get away from their duties. Next year, probably, Mr Hall-Jones’s Shops and Offices Bill will become law. If the amendments he proposes are necessary or desirable, they ought surely to he brought into operation this year. The Absolute Majority Bill lias been slaughtered. Parliament might or might not have approved of it, but it ought to have been submitted for discussion this year, seeing that we shall have the general elections in December. We always find that measures like the Young Persons Protection Bill are abandoned, not because their provisions are undesirable, but because social reforms must always be sacrificed when a gas company wants to extend its profits or a syndicate has a “ concession ” to get through Parliament. There are a great many reforms clamouring for a hearing in the colony just now, hut the reform of Parliamentary methods, which calls among the loudest, seems to he least beard.