NOT CAUGHT NAPPING

Marlborough Express, Volume LIV, Issue 189, 11 August 1920, Page 6

NOT CAUGHT NAPPING

THE FINANCIAL DEBATE,

Speaking to an Expbess representative, Mr It. McCallum, M.P., who was in Blenheim yesterday, said it had been amusing to him to read the criticism in some newspapers chiding the Oppositon for not continuing the Financial Debate. He is now rather an "old bird," he said, and he holds very strong views on matters of this kind. He looks upon himself as the one member of the Liberal Party who caused the debate to break down at the time it did.

True he was approached by the Whip to say whether he was prepared to go on some time before Mr Hunter spoke, but he distinctly informed his party that in his judgment general speeches—which meant no more than party speeches on debate—were not wanted at the present time. In fact, speeches on the Address-in-Reply and the Financial Statement were not productive of any general good, although they might advance party interests when the time came.

One amusing thing, said the Member for Wairau, was that when the Address-in-Reply debate was turned into one of no-confidence, the Reform papers throughout the Dominion raised a huc-and-cry against the waste of tinie on the part of a small band of twenty Oppositionists trying to hold up the business of the country. That debate occupied but very little of the country's time, and of course the time thus taken up would have been consumed in an ordinary debate on the Address-m-Reply. Any debate on the Financial

Statement would mean a continuation of discussion on the policy of the Government. "Now," said Mr McCallum, "there is practically no policy set out in the Financial Statement. It is merely a statement from the Reform Party's standpoint of the country's present position, and I for one was not prepared to say it was not as fair a statement as the Finance Minister and his party were capable of putting before the country. It becomes the duty of the Opposition to assist the Government to enact such legislation, and bring about such administration as will .speedily rehabilitate the country and bring it back, to tho normal position it was in before the war. All this can be equally well achieved in full, free, and fair discussion on the measures now to be submitted for consideration and which are merely foreshadowed in the Financial Statement." . . . , Certainly from some speeches which might have been delivered ideas might have been taken from which the Government could have drawn suggestions, but one of the leading features of the Budget was a promise by Mr Massey to refer to the Finance Committee—for the first time ins the history of the Dominion—matters of important finance. Said Mr McCallum: "I am on that committee, and Mr Massey knows that I for one, and the Liberals associated with me, will dd our best to unravel the present financial position and do justice to all." In this connection he pointed out that his own definition of a Liberal was put by Mr Massey into his peroration of his Budget speech. "It is true," he concluded, "that the Labor Party were * caught napping.' Its members, and the Independents, fully intended to make an exhaustive use of the debate on the Financial Statement for party purposes—probably for party purposes alone; and there was a feeling of satisfaction and pleasure among a number of us that they were thwarted in this respect."