CLOSE VOTING.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20964, 1 March 1930, Page 12

CLOSE VOTING.

The Labour Government at Home is having an anxious time in the passage of its Coal Mines Bill, Twice has it narrowly escaped wreckage over the measure. On each occasion it seems to have been saved by the absence or the abstention from voting of some of its opponents and by the support it has received from others of them. The majority of eight votes by which the second reading of the Bill was carried in December was increased by one vote on Thursday night upon an amendment proposing the deletion from the Bill of a provision for the regulation of the output of the mines by the introduction of a quota system. Ihe Conservatives who were present in the House of Commons when the division was taken in December voted in a solid phalanx against the Bill as the Labour members did in favour of the measure. There were no defections from either of these opposing parties in the division this week. On the occasion, however, of each division, the Liberals ■ were not a united party. Two of their number voted for the t second reading of the Bill and five, though they were present in the House, abstained from voting. On Thursday night four Liberals voted with the Government and eight abstained from voting. It was, therefore, to the indulgence shown to it by members of the Liberal Party that the Government escaped defeat on each occasion. Even now, however, it cannot feel at all confident that the Bill will be passed. The opposition to the measure on the part of the Conservatives and the majority of the Liberals is so uncompromising that it seems highly probable that the third reading will be strongly contested.