The New Zealand Times. TUESDAY. SEPTEMBER 5, 1922. THE SESSION

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 11307, 5 September 1922, Page 4

The New Zealand Times. TUESDAY. SEPTEMBER 5, 1922. THE SESSION

When will the men who oppose the Government leave off telling the public . that they have no confidence in the Government ? When will they cease dividing the House on the subject, to place on record all the opinions that are possible, for and against the Government? When will they discover "that the public has had more than enough of no-confidence sallies, impressive only in the hollowness of their defeat? These questions force themselves on the public, weary of perpetual denunciation punctuated by minority divisions as paltry as the arguments that precede them. Why is the public weary? Because it expects spme kind of work from its representatives in Parliament. No one objects, or wants to object, to a big sessional battle. On the contrary, everyone likes to see a Government compelled to justify itself all along the line of its policy. But surely there is a. limit to this kind of thing. It cannot require to he repeated time and again. When the only result of attack is the record that certain individuals said, “I do not like thee, Dr Fell,’' the public are not anxious to have the record made many times, especially when the experience includes the second line of the famous veise, the line openly confessing that the critio does not know much about the matter. It is not as if words of wisdom flowed every time an Opposition critic made - a face at the Government benches. But the wisdom is so exhausted after the first or second noconfidence sham fight, that even the semblance of constructive criticism is absent. Finance is not an exception. On the contrary, it offers more instances of perfunctory criticism than any other subject. The heaven-sent financiers are never tired of showing off the gifts that cpme to genius without study. The few debaters who understand the subject and talk well are always welcome, and always justify their weloomo by their good service with facts and principles. Would they were alone I The good these men do lives after their debating lives are over. But that benefit, great as it is, is badly offset by the great proportions of the accompanying intolerable. Unhappily, there is no hope of remedy except in the fiction that the good sense of hon. members will curtail unnecessary exuberance. As the loss or curtailment of Parliamentary freedom would be worse than any part of this evil, there is really nothing more to be said. Before the lessor evil we can but feel thankful that the no-coufi-dence epidemic seems to have abated. It may be as well to remind the people concerned that the electors of this country can see most things for themselves. If a man is “agin the Government,” the publio does not require several volumes of “Hansard” to impress the fact on its mind. It may even be doubted whether any elector will look into a “Hansaid” volume with an inordinate proportion of fruitless “no-confidence” in its groaning pages. It may he that too much of this kind of thing will exact the penalty of a turn in favour of a Government. For it is not a question of threatened men living long, so much as of the ridicule that kills. There is a great deal of the “ 'Erkles vein” in these assaults on the Government position, and nothing lends itself more fully to ridicule than the “ ’Erkles vein.” However, “ ’Erkles” or no “ ’Erkles,” we feel thankful for the

probability, so far as we can see, that there will be straightforward business for the rest of the session. The members seem- to have realised thdt the pleasures of “jazz” have carried them away rather too often, and to have felt that, as camouflage, the “ ’Erkles vein” is played out. Get on with the business.