The New Zealand Times. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 1921. AN ABSURD AMENDMENT

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVII, Issue 10850, 16 March 1921, Page 4

The New Zealand Times. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 1921. AN ABSURD AMENDMENT

I« it possible to take Mr Holland’s rigmarole seriously ? It is, of course, not possible. But as Mr Holland is the leader of a party which aspires to the government of this country, the amendment he has drawn up to the Address-in-Rcply cannot be ignored. Beginning at random—quite according to the manner in which the rigmarole is put together—we select the rigmarole’s demand for appointment of the New' Zealand representative at the Conference of the High Commissioner. At the outset the fact strikes one that the High Commissioner is not a representative in any sense of the word. In the second place, the House is discussing the invitation to the Prime Minister, not to the High Commissioner. Thirdly, the Prime Minister is the constitutional representative. The rigmarole invokes democracy to prove that the Prime Minister is not representative. But the fact happens to be that the Prime Minister is the head of a party, who appealed to the constituencies as head of that party, which was returned with a decided majority. Opinions may differ about the fitness of the method under which the franchise was exercised; that is a debatable matter. But the constitutional point, which is not debatable, is that the Prime Minister’s party has the constitutional right to be regarded as representing the majority of the voters of New Zealand; and the only right which can he recognised. That right has procured him the invitation before the House. To olaim a referendum, as the rigmarole doesj for the selection of a representative at the Conference, is to fly in the face of the Constitution, which must, until it is changed, be obeyed. Apart entirely from this point, what is the value of a demand for a special referendum to give us a representative, in face of the, alternative demand to accept a person who is not a representative in any sense of the word ? Moreover, when we see that this person whose appointment is asked for has been placed in his official position by the Prime Minister, who is objected to as non-representative, we are forcibly compelled to realise that the rigmarole has reached the extreme of constitutional absurdity. Then as to the High Commissioner. He is a subordinate officer, whose word is nothing at such a Conference as is in question. Bub the Imperial Government wants to confer with the persons who have power and the responsibilities of power; with Prime Ministers who have obtained power constitutionally; who have constitutional authority to express the wishes of their people, and can bind them within the ascertained limits of those wishes. This is the only way to arrive at any settlement in public matters of importance. To throw a subordinate officer at the head of a Government inviting a Prime Minister duly accredited shows a crass ignorance of public business which, in a party leader who aspires to govern, is shameful, because it is inexcusable. Thus the rigmarole convicts itself of business ignorance as well as of constitutional absurdity. The double fault has a setting of shallow arrogance and senseless perversity.

Tho rest of the rigmarole is an amalgam of copybook maxims, pretended panics, and threadbare humanitrian rags, into which the glorious Red Flag is usually cut up for popular delectation. The copybook maxims are, of course, supposed to be a crimson monopoly. The order (no less) to our representative not to help precipitate a war with America, sounds as if it had been hatched in Porirua, and the bracketed “other wars” has a flavour of the “Council of. Direct Action,” which has been recently compelled, by stress of events and the sturdy obstinacy of sane Labour in England, to forget the diluted Vermillion cloak in which it masqueraded for a few hours of unrelieved absurdity. The reference to Ireland is a bid of the wildest for the support of the Irish section of this community, which has proved its loyalty to the Empire by action from which these bidders shrank panic-stricken. The reference to Egypt forgets tho main fact that Egypt has never been governed so justly, or with such prosperity, since the days of the Pharaohs, and ignores the historic truth that the same country has been rescued by the British from tho intolerable oppression of the Unspeakable Turk, in alliance with the spendthrift rascals of the Ishmael type. The reference to India ignores both the benefits of the past and the concessions of the present, and dares not sa.v that the concessions are insufficient, or that the process of en-

lightenment in self-government ought to be sudden. In any case, these are not in the main our affairs, and the full extent to which we are concerned can be recognised by a general instruction to our representative. As to the prayer against the appointment of the Acting-Premier, that winds up the rigmarole very fittingly. It ignores the patent fact that the appointee is the only man available of sufficient experience and attainment; it forgets that there is precedent here (Sir E. Whitaker and Mr Waterhouse) and in London for committing the office to a member of the Second Chamber; it makes the pretence habitual of gross exaggeration, for it suggests no less than that the Prime Minister under the Constitution is a despot as uncontrollable as he is tyrannical. In short, this reference adds to the impression that the rigmarole bristles with bogies. It concludes without any suggestion of constructive alternative, and therein it approaches closely the characteristic practice of anarchy. In short, the wildness of this amalgam of. sentiments, panics, and suggestion is as marked as the constitutional absurdity and the crass ignorance of the rest of the rigmarole. To take this seriously is impossible. To take it as it deserves is to drop it into the limbo of things which deserve to be forgotten.