BUSINESS IN PARLIAMENT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVIII, Issue 284, 29 October 1928, Page 11

BUSINESS IN PARLIAMENT.

OBSTACLES IN THE WAY. (Nineteen Twenty-Eight Committee.) It has been suggested, tentatively, that if the honorarium of members of the House of Representatives were sub. stantially increased business men of standing in the country would be less disinclined to seek admission to the political arena than they are under rt'lie existing conditions. “We cannot bid against private business,”, says a competent" authority on this subject, “but we can go so far as to offer a reasonable competence to the man who is prompted by a desire to serve. Wo can make it possible for him to do so without his drawing heavily upon private means or unduly penalising his family. This should not make politics more professional. Rather it should increase independence by. widening the area of selection. There are probably many men who would agree to serve without any expectation of profit if they could think that rtho privilege of serving would not involve them in heavy loss.” The experience of the last three or four decades, how■ever, scarcely justifies tlie assumption that business men of outstanding ability would be induced to engage in the hurly-burly of politics by the prospect of securing a higher honorarium than the one dispensed to members ot tnc House of Representatives at the present time.

HONORARIUM AND SERVICE. The cash payment to members of the House in 1887 was £IOO, with an addition of £SO to those residing beyond three miles from Wellington, and of £ls to those residing within three miles of the capital cjty. In 1892 the honorarium was raised to £240; in 1901 to £300; and in 1920 to £SOO. In 1922, on account* of the general financial stringency prevailing at the time, it was reduced to £450. Both business and politics have undergone many changes since 1887, and notwithstanding the fact that members’ honorariums have been trebled during the interval, and their perquisites more than trebled, there are many fewer prominent business men in the House to-day than there were forty years ago. This need be no disparagement to the present House, not to any of its predecessors, but it sets one speculating as to what hind of “reasonable competence” would induce the head of a big mercantile concern to embark upon a political career demanding the greater part of his time during at least four months of the year. This is not to say that the business man is any less ready to give his services to the country than are the farmer and the lawyer to give theirs, but simply that the business man does not enjoy the opportunities that do the farmer and the lawyer.

THE ALTERNATIVE. There is another point in connection with this subject which is worth mentioning... With the passage of the years a general. election has become more and more' simply a means of determining which of • the contending parties shall govern the country. The political views of the candidates are of mtich less consequence in the eyes of the great majority of the electors than are‘their leanings towards one particular • party or another. This state of affairs is not peculiar to New'Zealand.' It' is. perhaps pVen' more' pronounced in the Mother Country than it is here. A Royal Commission set

up in England some years ago to report upon the electoral system then in vogue appears to have accepted. it as inevitable. “A general election •is in fact considered by a large portion of the electorate' of this country,” it reported, “as practically a referendum on the question which of two Governments shall be returned to power.” With this idea pervading the community, and infecting Parliament itself, wdiat could.a business man, .even with the honorarium of a thousand a year, hope to do towards enlarging the vision of the contending parties f The only useful alternative in view seems to be for the Government to keep in touch with business and give reasonable attention to its representations.