OPENING OF PARLIAMENT

Otago Witness, Issue 3197, 23 June 1915, Page 49

OPENING OF PARLIAMENT

PROBABLE LEGISLATION. £Fbom Otjb Own Cobhzspondhnt.) WELLINGTON, June 21. Parliament will be opened by commission 021 Thursday, and the event of the day in the House of Representatives will be the election of Speaker. The Speaker in the last Parliament had not arrived in Wellington to-day, but it is generally assumed that he will accept nomination for the Speakership again, and that he will be elected as a matter of course. The Prime Minister informed a reporter to-day that the Government would not introduce any measures properly described as party legislation. He took it that taxing Bills to provide the necessary revenue for war purposes would not be called party legislation in the ordinary sense of the word.

As to the Government’s taxing proposals nothing has yet been divulged. It is probable that they will be embodied in several Bills, but it may be found possible and desirable to embody all of them in one Bill. At present it seems rather too much to hope that all these proposals will meet with the approval of all members, and the biggest task of the session will certainly be the passing into law of these war tax ’proposals. One of the first Bills to be introduced will be that designed to make our military pensions more liberal. It is generally allowed that those provided for in the Defence Act of 1909 are quite inadequate, and the Defence Minister has already given that as his opinion. He has also expressed a hope that New Zealand may be able to come to some arrangement with the commonwealth so that there may be one pensions scale for the two Pacific dominions. There will be a Land Bill, but it will not be contentions, as its predecessors have been, for the Bill will simply make it possible for soldiers on active service to take part in land ballots during their absence from New Zealand. The Prime Minister has lately explained a scheme for allowing returned soldiers to take up land, and he stated that it might be necessary for the Government to purchase land for this purpose. The area reserved for soldiers will probably amount to no less than 100,000 acres. • Minor amendments are to be proposed in the War Regulations Act. The Mortgages' Extension Act, which has been found to work inequitably, will be reviewed, and the House will be asked to amend it in the direction of giving the court more powers under the Act. The Enemy Contracts Bill—a new measure to give the Government power to declare void any contract made with an enemy—is certain to pass without opposition. The Conk Islands Government Bill, held over from last year, will probably be reintroduced. It is a measure which proposes to give the islands a local government and a code of laws, and to remove many of the anomalies existing in the control of the islands' now.