POLITICAL NOTES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15862, 27 February 1912, Page 7

POLITICAL NOTES.

[From Ocr Correspondent.] WELLINGTON, February 26. AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES.

“We do not require aristocratic colleges like Lincoln College,” said the Minister of Agriculture to-night, “ where the student pays £4O a year to begin with and a great many other expenses afterwards. I want a school at which tho son. of any man in New Zealand can get agricultural instruction, and where for the first year his work will go against his fees and keep, an<* : after that in proportion.” A CRUEL CAMPAIGN. > “The most cruel campaign on re-, cord,” was Mr Laurenson’s summing up of the reoent election. It was mutually;; agreed before the election that no members of tho Liberal Party should go into the Marsden electorate because tho Opposition member, Mr Mander, was in bad health, but Mr Hogg, whoso .; earnestness and integrity could not bo questioned, was fighting a desperate election at Masterton. Ho was sixty years of age and ill, but two or three members of the Opposition went to thi» electorate to fight him down. Only,; last session, when the daughter of %’ • Liberal member sat next the wife of a man who was now supporting Mr Massev in Parliament, the woman said such , frightful things about the Liberal member that the girl burst into tears in tho' House. This was a sample of the fighting that had gone on throughout th« campaign. DEPOPULATING CANTERBURY, f A member of Parliament is allowed; only one speech on any motion, but hot. is entitled also to make a personal ex-; planation if he has been misrepresented..’ This little loophole has been widened,' “ and widened until it admits of the of second, third, fourth and more speeches oa one motion. M? Massey bobs up after almost every' speech and claims a personal explanation. The other night when Mr L. M. Isitt said that the Opposition land policy would depopulate Canterbury, - Mr Massey indignantly explained that his policy was not aimed at depopulate ing the province, and Mr Isitt accordingly eocepted the personal explanation and assured Mr Massey that he had not intended to say that the policy aimed afc that end, but would hare that effect. To-night Mr Isitt referred to the matter again with the remark that it was unworthy of notice, except that Opposi-j tion papers had mado much, of the fach that ho had apologised to Mr Massey. Mr Isitt read his “Hansard” proof, in , which he had used the phrase “ It’ means tho depopulation of Canterbury.” This, he said, could not be in- 5 : terproted to mean that the policy was intentionally launched with that pur- v • pose. STATION FOR RAKAIA. Mr W. J. Dickie is moving for the \ erection of a new railway station at) Rakaia, not Methvon, as was previously stated.