UPPER HOUSE REFORM.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20964, 1 March 1930, Page 23

UPPER HOUSE REFORM.

IN NEW SOUTH WALES. PROTESTS AGAINST REFERENDUM. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, February 20. The Premier, Mr Bavin, and his Government are undergoing severe criticism, even by a section of the Nationalist press, in consequence of their proposal to take a referendum shortly on the question of Upper House reform. The ground for attack is that it is an unjustifiable expenditure of a huge sum —some say the referendum will cost anything up to £7o,ooo—at a time of depression, and that, with thousands out of jobs, the money could be far better spent in reproductive works. That the referendum will cost £70,000 is denied by the Government, but there is no denying that it will involve a huge outlay. The Govonjment is not even certain of victory, for an influential section of both the Legislative Council and the lower elective chamber is dead against the Go'-ernmeiit’s reform. The Government at the latest State election promised a referendum on this matter, but the attitude of its critics is that) while its proposal is a commendable gesture of its fidelity to its election pledges, it is an offence against good government to spend a vast sum on a referendum which can well wait a bit longer when things generally are so bad and the money can be put to better use.

Certain it is that if the referendum is taken and defeated, what is regarded as a sheer waste of money on it will be thrown in the Government’s teeth at the next election, when it will want every vote that it can get even if it has to drag electors to the poll. What the Government fears is that if Labour gets hack the Upper House will be abolished, but the Legislative Council has stood the stress and the storms of a century, and it is not going to he quite a simple thing to get rid of it. This the Labour i'arty knows from experience. Even men whom it nominated to the Upper House, while they went there to scoff at it, have remained to pray that it would not be abolished.