GOVERNMENT BY REGULATION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 199, 23 July 1926, Page 6

GOVERNMENT BY REGULATION.

Tiie protests that are being made by Chambers of Commerce and other bodies against “government by regulation”—that is by Orders-in-Council are both necessary and timely. It is, we are aware, necessary in the case of some measures to invest the Government with authority to re-

gulate the operation of Acts passed by the Legislature, but, of late years, there has been a growing tendency on the part of Parliament to leave too much power in that direction in the hands of Ministers. In Opposition, the Reform Party was very insistent upon the necessity for curbing the powers of Ministers to make regulations for the carrying out of the measures introduced and passed by the Continuous Liberal Administration, and it was on undeniably safe ground in urging that such powers should be restricted, because nearly every measure passed contained the customary clauses giving the Government power to make regulations for carrying out its provisions, and, in the majority of cases, it would have been better, and quite possible for Parliament itself, toJiave defined the essential matters covered by the regulations subsequently made by the Governor - General -in - Council. Exception has been taken, and not without warranty, to the bus regulations. Without disputing the right of the Government through the Public Works Department, the officials of which are said to have been responsible for the • drafting, to make such regulations, we are bound to say that it would have been much better and the regulations would probably have been framed on more workable lines,, had the matters contained in them been submitted to Parliament for its approval in the first place. However well-intention-ed, it is beyond question that Mr Coates and his colleagues have, by their action, departed from one of the fundamental principles of the policy the Prime Minister laid down for himself and his party in his election manifesto, when he declared for more business in government and less government in business. The fact that the motor bus traffic in the cities impinges upon the transit monopolies in which some six or seven millions of the ratepayers’ moneys have been invested, should not be used as a weapon against the former, nor should it entitle the latter, to penalising regulations, operating against the motor bus people, as would be the case were the regulations enforced; of which., at present, there appears to be little or no likelihood. The sooner we have done with “government by regulation” the better, except in respect of measures where it is absolutely necessary that power to make such regulations should be placed in the hands of the Government. The authority covered by that phrase, under certain circumstances, may well be said to be “loaded with dynamite.”