OUR GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM

Northland Age, Volume 5, Issue 5, 1 November 1935, Page 5

OUR GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM

Sir, —There is a recorded incident in the history of the British Parliament in which a member, during the debates on Ireland, said, “Now, speaking of Ireland as a whole”—when an Irish member immediately rose to a point of order, and stated emphatically that he objected to Ireland being spoken of as a hole ! However, it is usual to think of one’s country as an entity, and one’s countrymen as having some unity as a Dominion; but some novel and startling views presented to me recently would seem to show that such is not the case. It appears from them that in New Zealand we are engaged in a comparatively refined and de-bloodied type of tribal warfare; this possibly being a survival, a sort of vestigial remain, from the early days, which we have been unable as yet to eradicate. Alternatively, it may be only a new kind of sport for those not interested in the more conventional recreations.

The rules are interesting. First, everyone in the country agrees to pay tithes and levies of his income, on the beer he drinks and the tobacco he smokes, the proceeds going to make what are known as Government funds. Then the various tribes, or it may be teams, in their separate districts, elect one of their number, whose mission it is to go to the city in which the funds are held, and there by devious ways, personal influence, cajolery or threats—the technique of which is not quite clear—extract as much as he possibly can of the funds contributed to by all, to be spent in the district of the people he has so ably and correctly represented, enabling them, by the provision of roads and bridges, the Letter to foregather to ee'ebrate their general acumen and business perspicacity !

If these views are correct, then the only issue before this and every other electorate is to find the most grasping, avaricious, unprincipled man, the shrewdest twister of words, in brief the biggest scoundrel in the district, and for the people to honour him as truly representative of them. Should he then use his position for personal rggrandisement, he will be openly condemned as a rogue ; if he does not he will be damned as a fool. But is this a correct view of our governmental and electoral system? I beg leave to doubt it. Grave abuses will occur undoubtedly whilst we have but the shadow of a real democracy, yet even so we are more justly governed by our representative system—although it is truly representative of our political backwardness—than by any other method yet devised within the capitalist world and I refuse to believe that it is generally corrupt. Moreover it contains the germ of complete democracy which can develop just as soon as we v/ill that it shall. True, we have our would-be dictators who are at once a reflection and a warning. Extreme forcefulness and wisdom are not frequently allied, and the activities of these men-who-get-things-done usually the wrong things and then retire to a lonely place, an’ it please you, to think, as a touch of light relief, would be better presented on the cinema screen, where the charge for the entertainment is moderate, than in real life, where the cost is much too great, and the necessary relief from the programme, whilst light enough in all conscience, is not a bit funny to those who have to endure it. The fact is democracy must go on or get out. There inevitably comes a time, as with the League of Nations today, when lip-service to principles is called to account. That time is very near to whatever democrative principles of individual freedom exist or are accepted by us. For some peoples it has already come and gone, together with their freedom. If our Anglo-Saxon democracy is to continue, it is not enough just to wish that it may, we must know what it is necessary to do and by our knowledge be irresistible in the demand that it shall be done if the magnificent work of science and invention, allied to the toil of man, is

ever to give him the greater security and return that is now rightly his. At present, with some notable exceptions, the men we send to Parliament have neither the knowledge of political history nor theory, nor the passionate convictions or courage necessary to act boldly to place the social and commercial system by which we live firmly upon the new base of the economic changes which have come about.

They are as ourselves, hesitant, fearful in their ignorance of the unknown but not unknowable, unable to visualise a better world, wanting someone else to do things, willing to be led. That is the supreme chance of the man who gets things done, to lead them by the nose to do the things which are firstly in the interests of the few.

There is no economic depression today ; there is an economic revolution, and so long as we, at the behest of alleged statesmen, deny its existence and allow them to thwart its progress so long shall we be scourged by the effects of our own folly. Only dear old ladies of both sexes really believe that the best brains, bought by those who hold power today, are actually unable to find a solution ; but they are incapable of finding a solution which will perpetuate the power of their employers and no other solution will be accepted by them. Give a sixth standard schoolboy the indisputable facts of the situation in simple terms, and he will tell you correctly what should be done and what could be done. It would not be his part, nor is it that of you and I who are busy in our own sphere, to say how it shall be done.

The shareholders’ job is to decide the policy and appoint the directors, who employ the necessary specialists in their various capacities. Any man who is blazing- the new trail, who seeks to re-awaken the old pioneering spirit for real progress, deserves the fullest support from all having knowledge of the facts and not blinded by considerations of petty town loyalties or local advantage, which have no place in this. I am, etc., H. INGRAM.