A DANGEROUS MEASURE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19316, 31 October 1924, Page 6

A DANGEROUS MEASURE.

The end of the session is so nearly at hand that, unless there should be some unforeseen cause of delay, the' Prime Minister says, Parliament will be prorogued ’next week. If only a .few more working days remain at the disposal of the legislators, it is to be regretted that important Bills are still being introduced by the Government. It has long been a reproach to Parliament that it permits itself to legislate in the expiring days of a session upon subjects to which it should give mature consideration. Anyone who is acquainted with the atmosphere of the House of Representatives during the days that immediately precede the close of a session knows that that is precisely the time when legislative proposals receive the scantiest attention from them. The House is tired; the members are impatient to get away from the scene of their deliberations ; and there, are general symptoms of listlessness and mental torpor on their part. The Reform Government is not less free from blame than its predecessor was for taking advantage of the condition which the House betrays at this period of the session to secure the passage of measures that should receive the closest scrutiny from the members if they were as alert as their constituents expect them to be. An illustration of this is provided in the introduction this week of the Farm Land Mortgage Bill, the title df which imperfectly conceals a plan for the creation of agricultural banks. The Bill is, in fact, merely a watered-down version of the measure for which the president of the Farmers’ Union has been canvassing for support for the past few years. It does not propose to commit the State to a liability so great as the advocates in the country of this doubtful system of finance would have, but it is only in this respect of the degree of the assistance that it is designed that the State shall offer to the agricultural banking scheme that it is less objectionable than Mr Poison’s proposal, it is pfovided that the State shall make a free loan of a sum to meet the preliminary expense of establishing these agricultural banks, and that it shall also lend to the institutions a sum aggregating not more than £150,000 on which no interest will he payable. The shareholders of the banks will be persons who are borrowers from them. That is a feature of the scheme which really stamps it as a highly dangerous form of finance. Yet it is a, measure of this description which Parliament is to be asked to press in the last few days of the session. It embodies a scheme which we venture to think will be condemned by all financial authorities as not only unsound in principle but also as of questionable advantage to the persons whose interest it purports to serve. It is certainly one of these measures which should be held over until next session iu order that the taxpayers may have an opportunity of acquainting themselves with its proposals and with how it may affect them and of expressing their opinion concerning it.