A LEGISLATIVE MILL-RACE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22712, 26 October 1935, Page 13

A LEGISLATIVE MILL-RACE

Eemarkable is the contrast between the normal procedure of Parliament in dealing with legislative measures and the speed with which these are hurried through their various stages when the session is drawing to a close. Towards the conclusion of every session there is the same marked acceleration of the legislative machine, the same frantic haste to dispose of an accumulation of , belated business in the very brief time available. When the close of the session marks also the end of the Parliamentary term the pressure is likely to be accentuated, as has been illustrated this week. The law drafting office has been working at top speed, ehiiming out, to meet the requirements of the Government, measure after measure, and apparently the number of these that have been

brought before Parliament has been mainly determined by the capacity of the draftsmen to produce the Bills desired. Members have protested, as they have had every reason to do, against being confronted with this avalanche of Bills in the dying hours of the session. It is utterly impossible for them in the time available to give many of these legislative proposals any real consideration, and in the last days of a Parliament members are naturally not in a mood to concentrate upon the task of examining these rapidly succeeding measures, which, if it were properly carried out, would at least involve a comparison of their provisions with existing legislation. It should not be necessary that a Parliament, even if its hours are numbered, should present a spectacle comparable to an expiring legislative flurry. It must be difficult to urge anything by way of reasonable justification for the procedure that is thus so frequently followed. If the measures that come down, veritably like falling leaves in autumn, at the end of the session are really important and necessary the reasonable expectation should be that instructions would be given to the law drafting office in time to admit of the Bills being presented in circumstances that would enable Parliament to give them the close scrutiny which must be desirable. The fact that the practice complained of, with its obvious reflection of an endeavour to make up for lost time, is one which occurs under every Government does not render it any the less unsatisfactory. The only wonder is that amid all the welter of last-minute, ill-digested legislation, some of the enactments are not more surprising in their implications than is generally found to be the case.