PEARLS FROM PARLIAMENT

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 174, 31 October 1903, Page 15

PEARLS FROM PARLIAMENT

I ASSURE the House that my sympathies are, as a rule, with the weaker party.— Hon. Mr. Mills. * » * Then the honourable member said the figures of the Colonial Secretary were wrong. What nonsense ' I never heard a more absuid statement made in the House.— Hon. Mr. Mills. * * * My experience is this The old man it. a, competent man so long as he w orkb for a low wage, but when the old man w ants to get a decent wage he suddenly becames incompetent. — Mr. Millar. * * * It is an absolute scandal to see university education conducted in a building si" oh as we have in Auckland. It i s a wooden building that might be fit fcr a third-class shop.— Mr. Baume. * * * If every worker in the colony was a unionist, that would probably mean the death-knell of unionism in its present sense ; because if everybody was a unionist there w ould be no necessity for preference.— Mr. Davey. jfr # * Compulsion is alien to the spirit of unionism and to the genius of British progress. To compel whole classes or workers hostile to unionism into its ranks is nothing short of trade-union conscription. — Mr. Bedford. * ■» • I quoted the case of a Native girl who, v, hen, she had become weary from playin"-. laid herself down on the sand and fell asleep. In a very little while she was covered with, the moving sand, and before she was found the child was dead.— Mr. Heke, on Sand Drift Bill. * * * As a rule I hit out straight. I leave myself much more open for adverse criticism for sins of commission than of omission, and it is as plain as I can make English language put it that concurrent with this labour legislation our country has prospered. — Mr. Seddon. * * * It is already all but an impossibility for an employer to discharge a workman. An employer's life is one of terrorism , at every turn the law is to b> set in motion against him, he is treated under our legislation and m its administration as a sort of suspect.. — Mr. Duthie * • * Mr. Buchanan. — What kind of ducks are they ° Mr. McLachlan said the honourable member did very well with 1 the ducks*, but there was one kind of duck the honourable member had not, got. That was a "dear duck." [Sly allusion to Mr. Buchanans bachelorism.] * * * I am very much of the opinion of missionaries of long experience. — that the more whites you keep away from the islands the better. I would seal them almost hermetically to the whites if possible. I was at one time strongly tempted to settle at Rarotonga, and if I could have dispooed of my property m this colony without giving it away I should have done so. — The logic of the Hon. Mr. Scotland. * * * Mr. T. Mackenzie. — He had come to the colony w hen four years of age, and his teeth w T ere still sound. An hon. member. — And your tongue, too. Mr. T. Mackenzie — That is so . but the honourable member for Chnstchurch City spoke about some deficiency in the water, and 1 that was somewhat singular because he always understood the honourable member was a great advocate for water as an antidote for everything. * * * I remember when the squire or the factory-owner, if there was sickness 1 in tho family of the w r orkman, nice little things would be sent from the Hall little parties would bo given , and each workman and each youth in the factory looked up to the employer as a being almost something superior That feeling, of course, existed in those days. But the feeling was mutual. There was nothing of the dividend companies who would work youngsters ■seventy hours a week ; there was nothing of the companies who did not care what happened to the employees so long as they made big dividends for the shareholders.— Mr. Seddon.

Theie is nothing but a scramble for money m this colony.— Hon. Mr. Mills. * * * The Hon. Mr. Jonee.— l suppose that presently ne shall have our municipal laws made perfect. Ail hon. member.— Never. * * * Is it not a well-known fact tlhat the small contractor is the hardest driver of all not. the man who employs a large quantity of labour?— Sir W. R. Russell. We have the Premier laughing and giggling abooiL. a matter which is of far gieateAmporlanoa than he would 'have us behove.— Mr. Dulhie (Cook Island's Bill). . Lest year close upon £4000 was spent upon clocks — clocks for post-offices and town halls and the like. I call all these instances of frittering away public money. — Mr. J. Allen. * # * But the Premier has many of the attributes of a fairy — for one thing, that of making himself invisible whenever he chooses. — Sir W. R. Russell. * * * But there is a passage in an old Book thiat most of us have read, which is something like this 'And the land had rest." That is what this land wants — rest from unsettling legislation, rest from extravagance, and particularly, and perhaps most of all, rest from, the bi ass-band and big-drum order of politician. — Mr. Massey. ■r- * * Ministers could not very well take meimbersi to be fools idiots, or children, because members knew just as rn/uch as Ministers did. Coming to the bombastic breeze that was blow ing from, the direction of the member for Taranaki a little while before, he wished to address a few woids to that honourable gentleman. — Mr. R. McKenzie. The extraordinary thing about people o-i this side' of the House is thait they do not possess the gigantic intellect and genius of the honourable member for Wairarapa, which enables ham to produce something out of nothing, or those honourable members over there who declare they are able to produce' the actual facts before they have received them.— The Hon. Sir J. G. Ward. •* * * Although I never objected to the buvmg of land m the South Island, I say it would be much better to give New Zealanders m the South Island the opportunity of coming up to the North Is>ld.rd and acquiring some of these magnificent lands quite fit for settlement which aie to be found right through the Island. It will give them the opportunity to rise in the w orld — Mr. Witheford.