THE DEBATE ENDED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18762, 16 July 1924, Page 8

THE DEBATE ENDED.

The no-confidence debate which occupied Parliament for many profitleas days has ended. The clinrnx, tho division has produced no surprise. Except for the absence of one Opposition member, the voting figures might have been given the day the amendment was moved. The only result is that the Leader of the Opposition has placed on recoi'd a voluminous list of the things he says the Government should do. If he were to succeed to office to-morrow he would not himself attempt one half of them, for the very good reason that he would not have the slightest idea how to set about the task. The country understands this very well,, and places its own valuation on the grandiloquent gestures with which the attack was launched. There is every justification for impatience with these repeated no-con-fidence motions which result in nothing, save protracted wrangles during which the essential business of the country awaits attention in vain. If the Opposition insists on producing these motions time and again, there is nothing to say they must not; but surely by now they might conclude they had tried often enough, without achieving anything, and decide to substitute real work for the parade of heavy guns without ammunition.