Rising Members’ Allowances.

Opunake Times, Volume XIII, Issue 631, 26 October 1900, Page 4

Rising Members’ Allowances.

DISCUSSION IN THE HOUSE.

The Supplementary Estimates ware cons dered in committee between 4.45 and 8.15 a.m. on Saturday, and passed without alteration.

The Colonial Secretary, in reply to members who opposed the sessional allowance to members, said the Government believed that members were insufficiently paid. He was prepared to advocate an increase of the honorarium to £BOO. A sessional allowance could be voted by puttipg a clause in the Appropriation Bill. The Public Revenues Act Amendment Bill was not necessary for the legalising of the vote. After debate, the vote was passe 1 by 81 votes to 11, the minority comprising Messrs Atkinson, Buddo, Collins, Ell, Herries, John Hutcheson, Lang, McGuire, Pirani, Rhodes, and J. W. Thomson. Commenting on this matter, the Wellington Post says The Supplementary Estimates revealed the price that has to bo paid for the passage of tl.c iniquitous Public Revenue Act Amendment Bill. The Premier seems to have purchased his unconstitutional control over public moneys with a vote to increase by forty pounds the honorarium paid to members of the House of Representatives. The origin of this contemptible exhibition of political “ log-rolling ” dates hack even further than the new Revenue Bill. It can bo traced directly to the disenssio.-.s upon the measure increasing the salaries and allowances of the Executive. The Premier appears to have sai l to his malcontent followers, “If you agree to raise the emoluments granted to myself and my colleagues I will see that your own honorariums are increased.” It was not very safe to bring down a bill raising the salaries of members; that would have been too open a course for a politician so wedded to “ ways that are dark and tricks that are vain.” Besides, the Premier had certain alterations he wished to make in the law regulating the expenditure of the public revenue. So he ingeniously drew up a bill embodying those alterations, and containing a clause that would enable him to increase the remuneration of members by the simple process of a vote on the Supplementary Estimates.