PARLIAMENT AND PLEDGES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 6 December 1927, Page 4

PARLIAMENT AND PLEDGES

SHOULD candidates for Parliamentary honours give pledges to sectional interests in the community—pledges that hind them to a course of action regardless of the extent to which the merits or demerits of a particular question may be altered hv later developments? This question is being keenly dlebated by those who take an interest in politics. The Licensing Act Amendment Bill during the session just- closed presented the opportunity of effecting necessary reforms in our licensing legislation, hut all attempts at compromise before and after the Bill passed the House and when it was amended in the Council .were futile. To declare that the law’already provides •for a hare majority on the licensing question is absurd. True, no-license could h‘e obtained by «a bare majority but, as anti-liquor advocates have strongly complained, they have to secure a majority over both continuance and State control voters. The vote of the latter naturally counts for continuance, and realising this the Prime Minister sought to eliminate the third issue, but to introduce the 55-45 proportions. Members pledged to the bare majority defeated his main objective, and few can have been surprised at tho loss of the Bill. Upon the contentious Arbitration Act Amendment Bill a compromise was reached, and a conference of interested parties will ho held during the recess. Before next election more will he heard of the giving of pledges. It is unlikely that any attempt will he made to prevent interested or extremist parties endeavouring to obtain pledges. Candidates appear to have tho remedy in' their own hands if they desire to make use of it—to agree to refuse to give pledges.