QUERY AND ANSWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 410, 19 July 1928, Page 18

QUERY AND ANSWER

POLITICAL CATECHISM

GAOLS ARE NOT FULL

(THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Wednesday.

Negative replies to a number of tbe questions put to Ministers since the session opened led members, principally among tbe Opposition benches, to express indignation and pained surprise when questions and answers were discussed this afternoon. Labour members had in the early stages sought to give an earnest of their humanitarian feelings by asking if the Government would improve the pay and conditions of men working on unemployed relief jobs, and if widened application of pensions legislation were contemplated. To these groups of inquiries the answers, with a certain amount of qualification by way of embellishment, were in the negative. FERTILISER FREIGHTS In their questions to Ministers, members ran riot over a host of subjects. Mr. Lee Martin (Raglan) and Mr. J. C. Rolleston (Waitomo) were concerned about the price of fertilisers, either through freights or manufacturing costs. To the former the Hon. O. J. Hawken, Minister of Agriculture, said that railway concessions on fertiliser freights would this year amount to £150,000, which must be acknowledged to be a big concession, and to the latter he explained that the cheaper superphosphate obtainable in London and Bristol, England, was undoubtedly a lower-grade product than that demanded in New Zealand. The reassuring information that New Zealand’s gaols are not yet overcrowded was conveyed to Mr. H. G. R. Mason. The Hon. J. C. Rolleston said that during the past year the daily average :in confinement did not, as stated in the Year Book, exceed the number for whom there was accommodation,. Mr. Mason’s question referred particularly to the Mount Eden and Point Halswell prisons. “It is not proposed to introduce legislation nationalising the hospitals of the country—that is, financing their operations from the consolidated fund.” said the Minister of Health, the Hon. J- A. Young, to Mr. Lee Martin. To Mr. H. G. R. Mason the Minister of Public Works said of the Taupo-Rotorua railway proposition that it had, in accordance with the principle adopted some years ago, been adopted after thorough investigation by interested Government departments. FARMERS’ TRUCKS To Mr. A. M. Samuel (Ohinemuri) the Minister stated that legislation would be introduced this session to remedy the present circumstances, in which a farmer, who was not a contractor, had to pay a heavier tax on liis tractor, if he happened to take it on to a public road in the course of driving it to a neighbour’s property. Of a suggestion advanced by Mr. T. D Burnett that there should be differentiation in the fees demanded of motor trucks, to relieve a truck serving a railway from the tax paid by a truck in competition with the railway, Mr. Williams, Minister of Public Works, said such differentiation was not practicable. The Hon. R. A. Wright, Acting-Min-ister of Labour, informed Mr. W. E. Parry (Auckland Central) that the in-

terests concerned were now investigating the possibility of using better bags to avoid the risk of injury' to men handling basic slag cargoes from overseas. The calorific qualities of Wellington gas, said the Hon. Mr. McLeod, Minister of Industries and Commerce, are unimpeachable. Said Sir Maui Pomare: Legislation to fix the date of Easter will not be introduced until the fate of a similar measure now before the Imperial Par liament has been noted. Answers to 73 questions were circulated during the afternoon; so is political curiosity satisfied.