LEGISLATIVE LITTER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22211, 11 September 1935, Page 12

LEGISLATIVE LITTER

If yesterday's proceedings in the House of Representatives can be taken as an indication, the Government departments are seizing on the happy lack of major business this session to bring forth all their pet pieces of legislation. To judge by their early appearance, all these little bills and amendment's of existing Acts have been kept lying in wait for just such an opportunity. Now they have been delivered into the hands of compliant Ministers, no doubt with all sorts of immediate recommendations. In spite of this presumed urgency, the country has rubbed along for years without these attempts at further regulation and control and so-called reforms, and could well dispense with them for a little longer. At the present stage of convalescence in the national economy, people would be glad and the better of a legislative holiday. Instead, the departments seem bent on a legislative carnival. Yesterday's list of bills include measures affecting price-fixing, timber, mental defectives, rent restriction, urban farm rating, lawyers, masseurs and rabbits. Although the recital of these bills—and there are more to follow affecting sharebrokers and dentists—sounds like a joke, it is the sort of joke that does not go well with people who have already been harassed more than enough. The complexities of living are sufficiently numerous and varied without this fresh batch of statutory additions. The Government would be well advised to shelve these odds and ends, return them to the departments where they are valued and treasured, and despatch essential business bo that an early appeal to the electors can be made. Its real programme has been completed, it must stand or fall on that, and should not allow itself to be lost in a litter of small remnants. In any case some of these raise points of principle or procedure which should not be enacted in the rush atmosphere of the short final session. They should be held over until they can be given the mature consideration each should receive from Parliament. After all it is the Legislature and it must refuse to allow the departments to usurp or exploit its function.