THE DEPUTATION EPIDEMIC.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLI, Issue 179, 31 July 1907, Page 5

THE DEPUTATION EPIDEMIC.

I No less than nine deputations were given appointments by the. Minister for Customs on Monday last, other Ministers being also fully engaged. The Post remarks: —Again the deputationist is harrying the Minister of tho Crown. This is the time when a member of the Cabinet is more "waited upon " than the Sultan of all the Turkeys, and lie Hts to say "steadily in view" many times a day. It is the deputationist, not the member of Parliament, that represents a district. The member is a necessary or an unnecessary ornament, in the opinion of electors,* whose chief value lies in. ushering deputations into the presence of Ministers. When the headmen of a village desire a new pump, at an estimated cost of £10, they do- not rely on their representative in Parliament assembled to proclaim the crying need for the necessary article. They pack their portmanteaux, pay train fares to Wellington and hotel expenses sufficient to buy half a dozen pumps, and " wait upon " a Minister. The deputation is so much a part of the New Zealand system of government that it has added a horrible verb, "deputationise," to the long list of painful " ises." It is perhaps impossible to hope for relief, but lif the deputation is an institution too strong to''be shaken from its foundations, its house should certainly be put in order. An example for the Government- is provided by the City Council. Deputations- were once accustomed to unduly protract the, meetings of the citizens* House of Representatives, but a system of closure was adopted, much to the relief of everybody, including the deputationist. -No matter how niany. persons waylaid the council, the right to speak was confined to one or two (at most), and the orators had a limit of ten minutes sternly imposed. The result was beneficial all round.. The deputation clearly said what it had.to say; the sum of its requirements was not obscured in a mi?t of tvcrds. Similar procedure should be adopted by Ministers of the- Crown, for their own sake, for the good of the country at large, and, abcv? rll. y;v*\,;:c.2^r?itage of-tlic dopn L ■I.;o"i'f. whose.flodel ' of talk is wont to- hopelessly swamp his purpose.