The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING, Luceo Non Uro, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1924. THE ELECTIVE EXECUTIVE.

Southland Times, Issue 19347, 12 September 1924, Page 4

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING, Luceo Non Uro, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1924. THE ELECTIVE EXECUTIVE.

It is fairly obvious that the majority of the members of Parliament do not want the Bill introduced by Mr Hanan as a means of ending Party Government, and an enlightening feature of the debate on the measure was that the discussion seemed to proceed on Party lines. Mr Massey was twitted with having changed his mind on this subject since he took office, and while he made the excellent retort that he knew more now than he did when he was an advocate of this method of constituting the Ministry, he might have challenged the Liberals with the fact that when they were in office the Elective Executive was a current political topic, and the Liberals made no effort to adopt this reform. They also would probably answer that now they “know better.” Mr D. G. Sullivan certainly made a good point when he referred to the possibility of friction in the Cabinet owing to the presence in the Ministry of men of violent antagonisms, but no one seems to have gone the length of asking the proposer of the measure if it would destroy the Party system. It may be accepted that elections will be fought very much as they are t-o-day, and that the dominant Party in the House would use its strength, after a preliminary caucus, to elect the Ministers it favoured. A division of the House into groups would open the way to bargaining which would open the way to the danger of Cabinets of illassorted elements. The adoption of the principle of an Executive elected by the House would necessitate far-reaching changes in the machinery of administration to ensure that the departments would be sufficiently independent to make it impossible for a stubborn Finance Minister, for instance, to put obstacles in the way of a Minister of Education, and yet not so independent that the Cabinet would be entirely without cohesion. In the United States, though the Cabinet is selected by the President and the various departments are almost wholly independent of each other, the President is the over-riding power, and offers means of co-ordination, but the Americans themselves have grave doubts about the effectiveness of this process, and their desire for the Budget, as used by British Parliaments, suggests a yearning for a Cabinet in which there is co-operation and collective responsibility with an effective check on expenditure. The Elective Executive in theory is an excellent instrument, and it undoubtedly offers politicians a favourable platform, but whatever may be the opinions about its merits, it unquestionably opens up possibilities of friction in the administration unless the effects of such a measure are thoroughly canvassed and understood. When the House elects a Ministry, the matter cannot end there, because the new relationships within the Cabinet suggest a number of new problems and entanglements. Some of the members seem to be under the impression that there is an audible demand for the Elective Executive amongst the electors; but in recent years the subject has not been discussed to any purpose beyond the confines of debating clubs that happen to be hard pushed for topics. It is extremely doubtful if any organisation, public or private, could be moved to any excitement one way or the other by Mr Hanan’s Bill, and we are afraid that the members who discussed it were wasting time and delaying the appearance of other Bills.