SWAMPING THE COUNCIL.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 23, 26 December 1925, Page 6

SWAMPING THE COUNCIL.

It seems scarcely possible that the Colonial Office could have been informed of the true position, or that its responsible officials could have had knowledge of Mr Lang’s threat to pack the Council with a view to its destruction without the least semblance of a mandate from the electors. New South Wales is the only Australian State that retains the nominee Chamber as the upper branch of its Legislature. Hitherto no attempt has been made to reform it by placing it on an elective basis, as all the second Chambers of the other State Parliaments are. The Queensland Legislative Council, prior to its abolition by the Theodore Government, . was also a nominee Chamber, and, when it refused to do the behests of the Labour Government and to pass legislation of a repudiatory and confiscatory character, the then Queensland Premier appointed fourteen of his supporters who helped to vote for and bring about its abolition, although the electors had, by referendum, declared by a big majority for its retention. Having knowledge of that fact, as it must have, it seems strange that the Colonial Office advised in favour of the New South Wales appointments, which are directed to the same end. With an elective body the Government would have had to be .content to await a further appeal to the electors, had the Council been as hostile to its measures as the nominative body has been. Certainly the Chamber ought not to be abolished without some sort of mandate from the people of New South Wales, either by means of a referendum or by a direct appeal to the constituencies on the question of its abolition. But the appointments having been made, it is up to the people to make the next move.. It is clear from the passing of the Bill reinstating the railway strikers that the Lang Government can now be certain of passing its measures through both Houses of Parliament, and thus obtain for them the full authority it desires. The Labour. Government is under no necessity of appealing to the electors on the matter, as it would have been had the appointments been deferred. It has it in its power to do an incalculable amount of mischief before it can be called to account, and we in New Zealand should not fail to grasp the lesson which has thus been set us. Twelve years ago an Act was placed on our Sta-' tute Books providing for an elective Upper House. It remains inoperative because it has no legal effect until brought into actual being by Proclamation by the Governor-General in Council. The sooner we place our Council on an elective basis the better. If the Government is. dissatisfied with the Act as it stands, it should be amended at the first opportunity, so that New Zealand may not be called upon to undergo the same humiliating experience that New South Wales is undergoing in the swamping of its Upper Chamber by the mere creatures of the Government of the day, pledged to slavishly support it in all its ways.