PLAYING WITH REFORM

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8257, 21 October 1912, Page 6

PLAYING WITH REFORM

It is announced on behalf of the Ministry that the nominative Legislative Council must be reformed by making more nominations.

Last week the Government had two policies in regard to the Legislative Council. First it was to be elective;’ secondly appointments should be made for three years. The Ministerial organ now announces that as the Bill containing the latter proposal has been rejected there is no other course open to the Government but to appoint a batch of its followers to the Council for the full term of seven years. This is what the Government has been after all along, and faces corrugated with anxiety could be seen peering in at the windows from the day the first Bill came forward. Ministers will, however, require a much stronger excuse for packing the Council with “Reformers” than can be extracted from the artifices of the Minister of Internal Affairs; for nothing but derision could be evoked by claiming for such an act that “it was necessary to give effect to the national mandate.” No one outside a lunatic asylum claims that this mandate was for three-year appointments to the Council. The Ministerial claim is that the nation voted against nomination and for election. The Bill providing for an elective Upper House has, however, not yet been submitted to the House of Representatives. How then can it ba asserted that a batch of our old familiar friends must be smuggled intp the Council to pass this |‘mandate” when Ministers cannot claim for their- Bill the sanction of the elected House? The Ministry has all along played in holes and comers with this business, and from the first we insisted that the attitude of the gentleman having the matter in hand boro much more resemblance to that of a conjurer

with a rabbit under his hat than of a statesman seriously approaching a great question of constitutional reform. Everything that has rfneo occurred confirms this view.

Tho design throughout has been to make pretence of “Reform,” but really to make provision for friends. So far as tho latter is concerned it -would .lie less objectionable than to have the country saddled with tho preposterous Parliamentary system that would follow adoption of the “Reform” Bill recently shelved bv the Council. A Legislative Council possessing a greater representative authority than the Lower House, retiring only by instalments, and elected allegedly upon a proportional basis, but resting acutely on a territorial foundation, would introduce into the political arena a crop of fearsome difficulties. As against this even nomination is preferable, and none of us need have cause for regret at finding tho Ministry of the same opinion, for the task of bringing about a reform that shall bo real will thus bo left to other and more worthy hands. Ministers, however, ought to be honest on the point or they will find their appointments regarded by tho electors as a rather pitiful anti-climax.