PARLIAMENT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21421, 20 February 1933, Page 11

PARLIAMENT

$ STRENUOUS SITTING i SUNDAY BRINGS RELIEF sales tax bill debate end not yet reached MEMBERS WELCOME BREAK [JV TELEGRAPH—SPECIAL REPOT! TER] WELLINGTON, Sunday The most strenuous -week of the present session of Parliament ended a 1 few minutes before midnight last night, when th 0 imminence of 'the Sabbath concluded a sitting which had lasted over 57 hours. Had it not been for the intervention of Sunday it is likely that the House would still be 'sitting, for the Sales Tax Bill, which has been the subject of the unusually protracted debate, has not yet emerged from thi committee stage. ' Most members had not been to bed since Wednesday night, and no regrets were expressed when an armistice in the Jong hostilities had perforce to be de- " clared. The House will not meet again until Tuesday afternoon. Naturally the Government is anxious to press on with the bill, but for the House to sit on Monday a special resolution would be required. It was only to be expected that Labour obstructionists would have debated guch a motion until the House stood automatically adjourned at midnight last night, so that no good purpose would have been served by proposing a motion on which a decision would not have been reached. Summary of Position The position now is that the House has passed the 53rd clause in a bill of 69 clauses and four of the earlier clauses have been held over for redrafting, so that in passing 49 clauses since the House went inito Committee at midnight on Thursday members have taken an average of an hour to discuss each clause, and to maintain even that rate of progress the closure had to be applied nine times. There have been 55 divisions in committee and, as each division occupies at least five minutes, members spent nearly five hours of the sitting merely recording their votes. The whips in such circumstances had a strenuous time. They had very little time to sleep, for, apart from acting as tellers in the divisions, the responsibility was on them to keep track of members resting in adjacent rooms so that they could be awakened if the division bells failed to act as an alarm clock. It is possible that the bill will be under fire for the greater part of next week. There are still some important clauses to dispose of and members will return _to their stonewalling task refreshed in mind and body. Protracted Stage Ahead Possibly the most protracted stage will be reached when the schedule of exemptions is considered. It is anticipated there will be numerous amendments designed to place further items on the list, as -members are being inundated with such requests from their constituencies. The debate was' conducted in a very good spirit in the earlier stages, but during the last day or so there were frequent lively incidents, which had their origin primarily in the fact that, tempers were wearing thin under the strain of the long ! sitting. Government members were obviously under instructions not to speak, and the discussions were carried on almost entirely by Labour members, with a Minister rising every now and then to answer questions raised. However, exasperated by the stubbornness of the stonewallers, one Government member, Mr. H. Holland (Christchurch North) ViOiced a vigorous protest yesterday • afternoon. He declared that he wanted to go home and he thought the Labour Party had carried its protests to sufficient lengths. The appeal fell on deaf ears. However, Mr. Holland managed to arrange a pair with Mr. C. L. Carr (Timaru) and departed. Length of the Session Another Government member, Mr. Taite te Tomo (Western Maori) also gave vent to his feelings. Speaking in voluble last evening,* he appealed to the chairman and the Minister in charge of the bill to end the debate. "This is necessary in the interests of our health," he declared. "I have observed from the actions of some members that they are on the point of being unbalanced and I fear lest they should be reduced to condition which one associates with an institution at Porirua." Possibly in the light of the translation later given some Labour members regretted the "Hear, hears" with which they punctuated Mr. Te Tomo s speech. It is now unlikely that the session will <nd before another fortnight has elapsed. Among the measures still to be dealt with are the Customs Bill, another Finance Bill and a bill dealing with interest reductions partly, it is believed, by conversion of internal loans. In addition, the Cabinet has yet to consider the fate of numerous other bills of varying importance which have been on the Order Paper since the early days of the session.