EDITORIAL NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXIII, Issue 7323, 26 September 1898, Page 1

EDITORIAL NOTES AND COMMENTS.

The anticipation'of "another of those long sittings which have in ; the present session earned for thepresent House an unenviable notoriety was fully realised on Saturday. For some 28 with occasional respites, the House was engaged presumably in the consideration of the Old Age Pensions Bill in Committee, but in reality in a trial of physical strength, ' The spectacle was certainly not edifying nor the result gratifying, and the people have a right of serious complaint against their representatives for frittering away the time in such a flagrant manner. It is useless for the Opposition to deny, as they 'did through: Messrs Spobie Mackenzie and Herries, : that 1 they were responsible for the undignified position which the House occupied.' Though there was an outward appearance of a desire upbn their part to do business, there is no disputing the fact that beneath this fair seeming there wa3 evil intent. In some measure this was shown by several of the amendments pro-posed,-which were designed todestroy'the Bill, while at least one could not have been prompted by any other desire than to ■ ■ bill time. But It Was not only in this direction that the evil: intent of the Opposition was manifested. Even if it could be conceded that the amendments they proposed sprang from a genuine desire to improve the Bill, which, of course, it cannot be, the amount of time consumed in their discussion would suffice to expose their mala fides. No one can pretend for a moment' that it was necessary to spend hour after hour in the discussion of simple propositions the full drifb of which ought to be plain to an ordinary mind after a very brief discussion. In saying this we are not referring to what took place after the stonewall had been openly erected. There was a distinct waste of timelong before tbeD, and as evidence of this it is only necessary to point to the time occupied in the consideration of Mr Duthie's amendment to dispense with the condition of continuous residence in the case of commercial travellers to entitle them to the pension. The principle involved in that amendment had already been threshed out and determined, and thefe was not the slightest need to go over all the ground again. The House having refused to make an exception in the case of shearers, it must have been palpable to every sensible person that it would not do so in respect to commercial travellers. Mr Duthie may have been impressed with the belief that a a injustice was being done to the class whose cause he espoused, but he and those who joined with him in advocating the concession at considerable length could not have had the faintest hope of enlisting the sympathies of a majority. The principle had already been settled in the opposite direction, and members were not likely to stultify themselves by reversing their decision, and according to commercial travellers a concession which they had already deliberately refused to shearers. As to Mr Herries 5 proposal to extend to horse trainers and jockeys a privilege of coming and going which had already been refused to shearers and commercial travellers, nothing more need be said than that the object of the proposal was perfectly plain. It was moved, as the Premier said, simply with the intention of blocking business —in a spirit of mischief which justifies us in characterising as impudently audacious Mr Herries' subsequent denial that the Opposition were responsible for the position occupied by the House. The very fact that Mr Herries thoughb so little of his amendment as not to divide the House upon it, after time had been taken up with its discussion, exposed his insincerity. The long and short of the whole matter is that the Opposition have resolved that the Old Age Pension Bill shall not pass, and, lacking the courage to attaek it openly, they are seeking to attain their object by insidious means. But all their professions of a desire to " improve " the Bill cannot hide their base design.