GOVERNMENT BY SUFFERANCE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26556, 3 September 1947, Page 4

GOVERNMENT BY SUFFERANCE

The Government in New Zealand to-day lacks a secure majority; indeed, it scarcely has a majority at all. It is in office as much by the sufferance as the suffrage of the people. Yet even while it is without a popular charter, the Government is proceeding to change the social and economic structure of the nation to an extent that is irremediable. And not only is this Government insecurely seated by the will of the people; it is also uncertainly placed through the dissensions within its ranks which only by threat and compromise have been prevented from developing into open warfare. In fact, the Fraser-Nash line not only lies open to the menace of the electorate as a whole, but is in constant peril because of the activities of a fifth column within. This is a situation which deserves the closest scrutiny by the Opposition, which would be the spearhead of the direct attack, and could in certain circumstances also benefit from the discontents within the Parliamentary Labour Party. Politics, as Bismarck once observed, are not an exact science; but this means, that all the more in their practical application they should be studied with a penetrating attention to their vagaries. At any time a position could arise in the present Parliament in which the Government would lack a majority, either simply because sufficient voting strength was not present in the House, or because a measure was brought forward upon which the dissident elements within the Labour Party would not support it. In short, it is within the realm of possibility that the Opposition might bring about.the Government’s defeat, or find itself unexpectedly in a position to do so. How would the Opposition act in such a case? The answer is, of course, that its leader, Mr Holland, and the strategists of the National Party are not likely to be unprepared to meet such a situation as might arise either on a snap vote or through the failure of the Government to keep the party 'stragglers in check. The plans of the Opposition will not be divulged in advance, any more than are those of the shrewd and experienced present Prime Minister. Meanwhile, the Government is being allowed a latitude that some people must think is greater than it deserves. “ Fairs ” have been arranged, to enable its leaders to attend to business outside the House, and it has been spared the embarrassments that could have been thrust upon it. Its programme of radical and thoughtless legislation continues upon the most precarious of mandates; but the time may come when the Opposition will have to «act.