OPPOSITION RALLY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15900, 11 April 1912, Page 6

OPPOSITION RALLY.

The complimentary banquet to Mr O. A. C. Hardy at Methven last night was very appropriately followed by an “ Opposition Rally,” a form of entertainment that is quite common in the North Island but comparatively rare in this port of the dominion. The proceedings .appear to have been much the rame as those that have marked similar gatherings of the kind since the short session. One or -two of the lesser lights of the party preceded their leader with little speeches in which they repeated the set phrases they had uttered many times before and Mr Massey followed with the indictment of, the new Government and the old with, which everyone is now familiar. The member for Oamaru gave a little variety to the programme by telling the audienoe that he had heard “only that day” of an applicant for a position in the postal department whose “ application had been passed, by for two years because ho had no political influence ” and that he intended “ to get at the bottom of the case” even if ho had to ‘‘discuss it in Parliament.” IVe hope that lie will get at the bottom of the case without going to that length, but as he has only “heard” that someone has been ‘.‘told” we are rather concerned for the patience of his fellowmembers. Mr Massey having foreshadowed Mr Hardy’s approaching appointment to tho Legislative Council, where it is understood lie will represent the first Reform Government, cheerfully renounced the statement he had made earlier iii the day to the effect that he had been always “ associated with the one party,” by saying that the “ Old Tory Party ” he supported during his early years in Parliament was finally dead and decently buried. He was senreely happier when be said that many people were “ ashamed of the disgraceful tactics employed during the short session.” Open confession is proverbially good for the soul, but we should have thought that the leader of the Opposition would have found a more tactful way of expressing his regrets. It is curious, by the way, that while he and his friends are denouncing tho Labour members for “breaking their pledges” tliev are frankly building up their hopes of office on some of the Liberal members breaking theirs. But it is becoming more and more obvious every day that their loud talk of the good time that is coming to their own party through dissensions among its opponents is so much “ bluff.” THe member for Dunedin North assured the banqueters last night that Mi Massey would be in power inside three months,’” but he seems to have based his comforting prophecy on the gratuitous assumption that “ a number of tho quondam friends of the Liberal Paitj were ready to turn and mid them.” Really those Reformers are very credulous people. The conditions so eloquently depicted by Mr Thomson can exist only in their own fertile imaginations.