THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1935 END OF A CHAPTER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22250, 26 October 1935, Page 12

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1935 END OF A CHAPTER

J The present session of Parliament, ■ I like most of its predecessors, is dying | hard. With it will end the stormy i and strenuous life of the 24th Parliament, which since 1931 has had to pass judgment on the many and drastic Government measures designed to meet an unprecedented economic situation. This final session, by comparison with the four preceding ones, has been a mild and tame affair. The lull has been most welcome alter the series of legislative shocks and budgetary blows experienced in recent years. Actually the most important political achievement of the year took place outside of Parliament and of New Zealand. It consisted in the conclusion by Mr. Coates in London of highly satisfactory meat agreements, thus lifting a shadow from the economic life of the country. Within Parliament Mr. Coates was also responsible for the chief business, the presentation of a Budget which went further toward realising the promise of recovery indicated by that of 1934. Alleviations were granted in several directions, the most notable being the reduction of the emergency unemployment tax and the restoration of further cuts to civil servants and pensioners, these latter benefits being subsequently made retrospective to August 1. The disappointing feature was the withholding of general tax relief. Perhaps the most significant feature of the Budget was that it j marked the end of salvage work. Mr. | Coates found himself able to look ; ahead again, to resume constructive tasks. The same positive tone was found in; the Public Works Statement, and already large numbers of those formerly unemployed are being reabsorbed into full-time jobs at standard wages. Mr. Bitchener's working partnership with the Unemployment Board has made financially practicable many works which could not have been justified on purely economic grounds. Another major sessional event was the reaffirmation by the Prime Minister, supported by the Leader of the Opposition, of New Zealand's adherence to the League of Nations and the principle of collective action for peace. The passing of the Sanctions Bill was an earnest of the Dominion's faith and an event that is surely of historical importance. The trend that, in its small way, this legislative act makes definite is strikingly brought out in the speech published this morning of Mr. Winston Churchill in the House of Commons. Not much else of any real moment has been included in the business of the session which, after all, has been compressed into the short space of two months. There has Ibeen the usual rush of bills and amending bills toward the end, an accumulation that no chamber could consider adequately in the time allotted. The reform of this process of legislation by exhaustion is overdue. Parliament's control is lost and the expression of its will becomes farcical. It would be a salutary lesson to future governments, and to the departments that are largely responsible, if Parliament asserted its rights and refused passage to any bill without full explanations and a proper opportunity of considered debate. The number of petty measures forced upon Parliament in the last two or three days must go near to establishing a thoroughly bad record. These legislative Lilliputians are made the more insignificant as the mind casts back over the long travail of the present Parliament, soon to be dissolved. The Government has been bitterly assailed for its acts in that time, but, with all the advantage of knowledge after the event, which of us is clear as to what he would have done otherwise, or confident that the result would have been better or as good? It must be kept constantly in mind, of course, that the Government had to face the fact that the bottom had dropped out of our markets, and therefore out of our whole national economy. Adjustments had to be made. Since prices could not be raised, costs had to be lowered, the extremity of deflation being cushioned by raising the exchange on London by 15 per cent in January, 1933. Nevertheless there had to be cuts all round, cuts in wages, salaries, interest, all kinds of expenditure, and. worst of all, in staffs. So, while revenues were falling, demands for relief rose inexorably. The rate ol ! taxation also rose, if not the yield. Those years until 1934 were one long struggle with ways and means In the midst of it the Government found time to institute the Reserve Bank, which has since helped greatly to ease the , State finances, [n 1932, also, the Ottawa agreements were concluded, a favourable influence that has made ;

itself felt increasingly in the last two years. Finally there came that important group of three measures, passed within the last 12 months, designed to strengthen the position of farmers, and especially of dairy farmers. 80 comprehensive and farreaching a programme has not been completed without blood and tears. Yet the courage of the Government in demanding sacrifices of all the people has been justified by the measure of recovery achieved, showing that.the adjustments made have assisted in restoring economic equilibrium. It is natural that many who have suffered in the process should feel sore. At the same time they have emerged, and so has the country, with little real hurt. The immediate question for electors is, therefore, whether now that things are shaping the right way again, they can afford to risk an upset by a change of governments and an inevitable change of policies.