“Something Accomplished..”

Northern Advocate, 29 July 1939, Page 6

“Something Accomplished..”

THE Address-in-Reply debate has ended in the passing of the usual formal resolution. These debates are nearly always wearisome, but this one was more prolonged and tedious than usual. Seventy-three speakers kept it going for more than four weeks, in the course of which disinterested onlookers might have been pardoned for imagining that, a general election was to be fought about a month from now, instead of in 1941, for the debate from the start assumed the character of an electioneering campaign, and few constructive arguments were adduced on either side.

The temptation to the Opposition to indulge in criticism of the Government, to the exclusion of practically everything else, was naturally strong, as there has been important and unprecedented developments in the country since Parliament last assembled, but it must be confessed that as the debate wore on this criticism tended to lose its novelty, and the Government’s answer, with speakers in the proportion of about 2 to 1, rapidly grew even more stale. There has probably never been a debate in which more irrelevant matter was introduced. Many speakers apparently suffered from a paucity of fresh ideas, and apparently had to fall back on repetitions of arguments which were worn threadbare, during the election campaign last October. Although the broadcasting of Parliament is in many ways ap excellent thing, it is doubtful if it is raising the general tone of the debates. Certainly those listening in to Mr. H. S. S. Kyle’s final speech, for instance, might have justly felt somewhat uneasy. Neither the general tone of the speech, nor the running fire' of interjections to which the speaker was subjected, were especially commendable. Apparently members are animated by the delusion that listeners will be impressed if they devote themselves mainly to abuse of the other side,- but after a month of that sort of thing, the average man’s reaction is to yawn and turn the dial.