WORK OF PARLIAMENT

Northern Advocate, 11 October 1928, Page 4

WORK OF PARLIAMENT

Now Zealand’s twenty-second Parliament ended on Tuesday evening. The election of a new Parliament has been fixed for November 1-1. Save that the good deeds of the old Parliament will be emphasised by supporters of the Government, and the bad deeds exploited by opponents of the Government, its work will be forgotten by the electorate, the eyes -and thoughts of which will he turned towards polling day. It is interesting, therefore, briefly to survey the work of the old Parliament in its closing session. The outstanding feature was the absence of sensational incidents such as marked the earlier sessions. This may be attributed to two causes. Parliamentarians wove either so anxious to got back to their constituents that they did not wish to .prolong the session by raising questions which on other occasions would have been considered worthy of long discussion, or the policy measures brought down by the Government mot with, general acceptance. The fact remains that the business of the session was despatched quickly and smoothly. The House sat on 62 days, the sittings occupying 453 hours 2.1 minutes, or a daily average of 7 hours 19 minutes. Eighty public Bills wore passed and 27 dropped or otherwise disposed of. Outstanding decisions were the rejection of Biblereading in schools and the Licensing Bill. These matters, upon which so much interest is centred, remain where they were so far as legislative action is concerned, and, as a consequence,, will loom largo in the forthcoming election campaign. The Mental Defectives Bill, upon which the House spent considerable time, was'shorn of its most drastic provisions, but was passed in a form which will be sure to arouse considerable controversy. Labour legislation, in so far as the amendment of the arbitration' system is concerned, was of a negative nature. Members of Parliament will doubtless And ample shelter in this connection, for they may justifiably point out that the parties most intimately concerned—the employers and the workers —were unable to give Parliament a lead. Daylight saving, which promised to be an awkward matter for candidates seeking the votes of urban-rural constituencies, was made, the medium of a compromise which it is hoped will meet with the approval of townspeople and country people. These are only some of the outstanding matters dealt with during the last session of Parliament, but they suffice to show that the period was not by any means barren.