THE WORK OF PARLIAMENT

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 6384, 5 December 1907, Page 6

THE WORK OF PARLIAMENT

ARE LONGER SESSIONS NEEDED?

PRESS ASSOCIATION.

AUCKLAND, December 4.

During the course of an , interview th's afterneon upon the subject of the native land legislation passed at tho close Off last session, the Premier referred to suggestions made that this and similar leg’si at ion had nroceedod by tho process commonly known ns 'legislation by exhaustion.” "I am really surprised.” he said, "at the attempt to raise the cry of legislation by (tshaustioijj bearing the moaning that the important measures of the session h"d been rushed through at the end of the session. No one with any sense of fairnrss can say that a system of legislation by exhaust : on was adopted in connection with any measure placed upon the statute hook last session. I believe that Parliament should never sit after midnight, and I should only be too glad td see that carried out. To enable that to be done means that instead of sitting three or four months we would require Parliament to sit for six months every year, and -I recognise that that would be very inconvenient for a great majority of the members, none of 1 whom, as far as I am aware, belong to tho leisured olrss. They all have private xntere.ts to attend to, and would thus be inconvenienced, Ekit the only clear solution of the difficulty of presenting any accumulation of work at tho close of the sesdon is to make an earlier start and sit to a later date.