WILL THE FARMERS SEE THE LIGHT

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12434, 30 April 1926, Page 6

WILL THE FARMERS SEE THE LIGHT

There are two events without which no session of the New Zealand Parliament is complete. The first is the tabling of the Budget, the second the introduction and rejection of Mr T. K. Sidey’s Daylight Saving Bill. Yet Mr Sidey is not asking Parliament to pass a freak law. If he were, he would long since have been laughed out of the House. Ihe question is not whether daylight saving is practicable, useful and beneficial, but whether it is suited to New Zealand.

Some of the worst enemies of Mr Sidey’s Bill are its wellwishers. Through them, the principal argument the public hears in support of daylight saving is that it would allow the people more time for sport. Will that ever convince a farmer-dominated Parliament? Resolutions passed by football committees and city councils, which obviously stand to gain by more daylight, are almost useless. The Government will not begin to listen until the resolutions are being passed by farmers’ unions and county councils. If the daylight saving advocates want their Bill to pass this year, or any year, they must fight harder for it. At present they are too dogmatic. There are many objections to daylight saving. Some are ignorant, or fallacious, but not all. And until the farmers are convinced they stand to lose nothing, or that by losing something they will gain something better, nobody will lay rough hands on all the clocks of the Dominion.