GOVERNOR-GENERAL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22519, 13 March 1935, Page 8

GOVERNOR-GENERAL

- FAREWELL LUNCHEON CENTENARY OF DOMINION HOPES OF RETURN VISIT THE DECORUM OF PARLIAMENT (Per United Press Association) WELLINGTON, March 12. A graceful tribute was paid both in the Legislative Council and ia the House of, Representatives by the Governort General, Lord Bledisloe, in the course of his speech at the farewell luncheon tendered his Excellency by both Houses to-day. "Individually and collectively you have," he said, " throughout my term of office extended to me your courtesy, confidence, encouragement and goodwill, and I shall carry back to the Old Land nothing but happy memories of this Dominion, its people and those who represent them in Parliament. Will you permit me as myself an old member of both Chambers of the Mother of Parliaments to congratulate your two honourable Houses on the dignity and decorum which characterise your proceedings under the able direction of Speakers well versed in British parliamentary procedure, and instinct with our great British parliamentary traditions? I am given to understand by experienced and observant world travellers that in no Parliament in the Empire are these features more marked, and ceitainly nowhere is the spirit of goodfellowship and personal friendliness among political opponents more effectively maintained. They are features of your parliamentary life which have become a salutary tradition and are worthy of perpetuation." Lord Bledisloe next made reference to New Zealand's approaching centenary. "You will in five years," he said, "be celebrating yoHr centenary, and my wife and I hope, with your permission, to be visitors on that occasion. May I

make" bold to express the hope that whatever Wellington and Auckland may a dicide to do in marking appropriately -, and quite properly the hundredth anniversary of their own civic inception, a glowing and proud sense of nationhood will make the main celebration —unlike that of Melboirne —a great national event, a source of national rejoicing and an evidence to the outside world of national solidarity and confident national hope and aspiration? Let the shades of Hobson and Gibbon Wakefield shake hands in eternal friendship as they watch the proceedings, whether at Waitangi or elsewhere, with Godley and Cargill as their sympathetic comrades, and amid the plaudits of Waaka Nene, Hone Heke, Te Rauparaha, Wiremu Tamihana and other redoubtable Maori chiefs, AH were convinced, with the lapse of time, of the advantages to their ancient race of British citizenship and protection."