PARLIAMENTS FUTILITIES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21346, 22 November 1932, Page 8

PARLIAMENTS FUTILITIES

In time of . crisis there should be one rigid rule for the conduct of Parliamentary business —to do first things first. That rule has not been followed this session, a large part of which has been frittered away over comparatively paltry matters. Today there are before the House bills which should have no place on the Order Paper in a time of emergency, if at nil. The Government is not strong enough to suppress the untimely ebullitions of departmental obsessions or to direct the mind of members into constructive channels of thought. The Department of Agriculture, for instance, is more interested in establishing a system for the licensing of dairy factories, which will inevitably create dangerous monopoly, than in placing upon itself the measures of economy suggested by the National Expenditure Commission. The most important bills have been allowed to hang fire and if they are to be pushed through it will be in the dying days of the session, when, according to the common practice of New Zealand legislators, they will receive far too little critical study. From a survey of the Parliamentary news to date there has been little recognition of the fact that income tax revenue is progressively on the decline, and that it is vital that adjustments should be made in advance. The question electors 'are justified in asking is whether the Government and Parliament are pulling as hard against the perilous current as their duty requires or allowing their boat to drift through lack of grit and resolution. There is a feeling in the public mind that energy is exercised in a spasmodic fashion, that trifles are allowed to divert it from the main purpose, that economy team work is not what it should be, that the long-distance plan proclaimed some time ago will be a haphazard kind of effort at the finish. Leadership is required throughout the country and Parliament is certainly not supplying it.