HARSH DEMOCRACY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17920, 26 October 1932, Page 7

HARSH DEMOCRACY

STRIKING DENUNCIATION A MEMBER’S RECOLLECTIONS (Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this clay. Iu the opinion of Mr. T. D. Burnett " nl., Temuka) democracy is capable of dealing just as harshly as is autocracy. In a striking speech in the House last night he described how his ancestors had been evicted from Scotland by the actions of an aristocrat, and how they had lost their home in New Zealand illegally through the actions of a clemocratie government. Mr. Burnett said that he was « descendant of. parents who had been evicted from Scotland as described by Mr. J. A. Lee (Lab., Grey Lynn). Probably two other members of the House were in the same position. Their grandfathers, or granduncles had fought at Waterloo and had returned to Scotland to find their homes blackened ruins. That was in Sutherlandshirc, I.nit- since the great Reform Act of 1832 democracy had blunted tbe jaws oi the ducal aristocracy. Histoiy had a curious habit of running off at a tangent His people had been driven out ot Sutherland shire, but every morning when lie awoke he shook, hands, with himself that there had been such a man as the Duke of Sutherland. He regarded that man as one of the greatest colonisers and Empire builders Britain bad known. Certainly it was liot for the good of. Britain that he had been such, and it was not for the good of that country. He had turned his vast estates into sheep farms and deer parks. CONSERVATISM NEEDED 31,*. Burnett said his people came out to New Zealand in 1861, and went into the back of the MaeKenzie country. There they lived in a cob house, only two of the rooms of which knew wooden floors. It was there that his mother reared a family under conditions that no modern woman would tolerate, and it was only her faith in something eternal that carried her through. I hen a democratic Government hearing the flag of Liberalism, after 50 or 60 years occupation, took their home and offered it at public auction. A Government member: Who evicted them? Mr. Burnett: It was a government will b flaunted the flue of liberalism. It was kept in power by the predecessors of the Labor Party of to-day. Mr K. ,T. Howard (Lab., Christ,cinrch S.): Who is keeping them m power to-day? Mr. Burnett: T am. They have seen the error of their way. As the result of having to fivlit for mv bread and butter I am the only self-avowed Conservative in this House to-day. I believe conservatism is tbe only tbmg that will save New Zealand.