PUBLIC OPINION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXI, Issue 15332, 15 June 1910, Page 8

PUBLIC OPINION.

FROM YESTERDAY'S NEWSPAPERS. (By Telegraph.) THE ARBITRATION LAW. Another proposal that is attributed to Air Millar, this time in the columns of a labour publication, is that he contemplates proposing an amendment of the Arbitration Act to empower the Arbitration Court to give preicrence of employment to financial members of unions. At the present time the Court has, as it recently decided in the Christchuroh General Labourers' case, no jurisdiction to grant any such preference. If there should be any danger that if it possessed tho jurisdiction the Court would discriminate in such a way, it is fortunate that it has not tho power.—" Otago Daily Times." PAWELKA'S SENTENCE. The jury considered that Pawelka had not been proved guilty of tho capital charge, whereas it is only too clear that tho sentence passed upon him (nominally for larceny and arson) had an indirect relation to that charge. The incident can hardly fail to give rise to a discussion on the question whether the time has not come to limit the discretionary power of the Bench in respect to sentences, or to givo the jury a certain power in that connection. Tho actual decision will always remain with the Judge, no doubt, but the jury might have the right of saying whether an offence possessed this or that degree of seriousness, the punishment for each degree being statutorily fixed within reasonable limits.—Dunedin " Star." AUCKLAND EAST ELECTION. We may remind the members of the Ncdicense Party who took so prominent a place on Mr Davis's platform last night, that if they had upheld the pledged word of their representatives and loyally carried out the bargain that was made after prolonged negotiations last year with " The Trade," Mr Myers might now have a different law to obey, but as matters' stand, it seems to us in the highest degree disingenuous and dishonest to misrepresent a political opponent in this way.—Auckland " Star." FUNKING THE ISSUE. News comes from the north that the Opposition organisers aro suffering from cold feet, and that they have decided not to " take tho platform," as they threatened to do before the session commenced. Mr Massey informed his Auckland sympathisers that he had just been round the dominion, and that the feeling was not in favour of a platform campaign at present. The fact is that oven anti-Government electors are heartily tired of the dreary graphaphonc platitudes of the party of funk. They know all about the "nepotism" and "extravagance" of the Government; .they know that tho country is going to the dogs through " maladministration," they know that Mr Massey is a " reformer." but they do not know what the Opposition is going to do about it. Apparently they have got to that stage when they do not even want to know.— " Now Zealand Times." LOCAL GOVERNMENT REFORM. Local government was one of the subjects of proposed legislation to which the Premier referred in his speech at Yvinton. If ho really means business tho country will have reason to be grateful, but it has heard the same kind of talk so often that hope refused to spring. If the reduction of the number of local bodies by wholesale amalgamation, and tho increase of the powers of tho survivors are accompanied by a change in the system of subsidies, so that the amount of public money spent in a district is no longer dependent upon the good offices of the local member, the favour of the Government and the acquiescence of Parliament, a beneficent revolution will have been accomplished in both local and general politics.—" Evening Post."