MR BAVIN’S TRIP ABROAD

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6902, 7 May 1929, Page 9

MR BAVIN’S TRIP ABROAD

PAYING HIS WAY;

SYDNEY, April 12. The Premier (Mr Bavin) who is making a trip to England to try to restore his lost health, is taking the unusual political course of paying for it out of his own pocket. If, after such a comparatively brief roign as Premier, he had decided to make the trip, in accordance with political usage, at the expense of the public, and found some trivial excuse for doing so, he would probably have heard about it, unfavourably, of course. But far from being lauded for his exemplary action in footing the bill for his jaunt, he has now been told by one of Sydney’s most influential newspapers that, in going to England privately at his own expense, he is pursuing a course unbecoming to the head of a government. One might, of course, expect other politicians to hurl a philippic at him, on the ground that he is setting a bad precedent in paying for his jaunt. . As a matter of hard fact, Mr Bavin might justifiably ask the State to pay for his trip, for he has unquestionably broken his health on the wheel of politics, and, what is almost as bad, far from satisfied many of the Government’s followers in a session fruitful of very little outstanding legislation. Any good the government might have done has been largely overshadowed by its taxation, and. from the standpoint of industry, by its impost on wagcs-shcets for the upkeep of child endowment. Mr Bavin perhaps sometimes sighs for the lost happiness of the days when ho confined himself to his lucrative legal practice.