Political Excursions

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 443, 27 August 1928, Page 13

Political Excursions

A NIBBLE AT THE ESTIMATES

Minister in the Firing Line

(THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter) WELLINGTON, Saturday. LAST week the Hon. A. D. McLeod and Mr. J. A. Lee seemed about to cement an unofficial alliance. Mr. McLeod for a few minutes shared Mr. Lee’s bench, a most unusual sight, and Mr. Lee while entertaining his distinguished guest was too busy to respond to Mr. V. H. Potter, a most unusual happening. But now the rosy promise of this blossoming amity has been shattered. The estrangement developed between Mr. McLeod and the Labour benches has been perhaps the most pronounced and interesting side-issue of the week.

TIOSTILITIES began when Mr. McLeod made some characteristically blunt comment on the tactics employed by Mr. Lee in the skirmish which developed over the delicate question of slumber in the chamber; and, the week-end truce left them at a point reached by Mr. Lee when he promised, with considerable emphasis, to remember the Minister’s admission that he was not particularly interested in something Mr. W. E. Parry was reading about returned soldiers. Unless there exists among members of Parliament a Freemasonry of which the public is ignorant, it is difficult to understand the indignation with which a group of members greeted Mr. Lee’s bland acknowledgment that members sometimes go to sleep in their places. Members of the public, craning their necks over the galleries as far as they dare, can see a member or two dosing almost any night of the week. With luck they might even see a Cabinet Minister submerged in that blessed anodyne which is the compensation bestowed by Nature on all who follow politics, or in exceptional cases might hear a contented, gentle snore floating vaguely upward from the depths. Why reticence should be ordained is therefore not quite clear. A FLAW IN THE SYSTEM Because members sleep on their benches they are not necessarily lazy, inept, or culpably somnolent. A hard morning on committee w*ork, an afternoon spent in weaving vague fancies round departmental reports that the members have not yet seen, and an evening on business equally wearying, are sufficient excuse for drowsiness. If sleep is to be banished from the chamber, then the system must be altered. Rational hours of work must be introduced; but rational hours of work might not permit the wide latitude for examination and obstruction which is given in the sacred name of democracy under the present system, so there the argument must end in default of fuller investigation. In its waking hours the House during the week disposed of the Budget, a host of Government Bills which introduced few questions of broad policy, and a few pages from the massive book of Estimates. The close of the Budget debate was by no means spectacular. Mr. W. D. Lysnar was drawn off at innumerable tangents by innumerable interjections. Air. T. E. Y. Seddon tried to make himself another Hannibal by buildinj; a road across the Alps, and Air. J. Horn pitter-pattered ecstatically among the gorges of Central Otago. Standing firm on all questions of railway policy, the Prime Minister in his very admirable speech was reminiscent of the man who shed his spurs and “Sam Browne” to become the unchallenged monarch of the Public Works Department. The grip of detail was abvoius, even though Air. W. A. Veitch did succeed in scoring a minor point over some question in the Fay-Raven report. EXCURSION INTO ESTIMATES The first excursion into the Eestimates was responsible for the parade of war funds administration as a topic for party argument. Moreover, it brought the Minister of Lands back into the firing 4ine. The internal affairs vote, as the Prime Minister remarked, was a bit “sticky,” but some

of the others whistled through in short order. Defence was a good example. General Young, as right-hand man to the Alinister, had hardly drawn his chair into a strategic position before the passing of the vote, without any comment at all, compelled him to execute an equally strategic retirement. The foreshadowed date of the closing of the session is now only five or six weeks away, and much remains to be done. There is likely to be a hectic rush toward the end, with measures that would ordinarily be smothered in talk going through without parley.

In the meantime attention and conjecture r*re focussed on the Licensing Bill, which is expected within a few days* How the Prime Alinister will attempt to avoid his embarrassing experiences of last session is not yet clear. He will probably have to steef himself to the sight of Alinisters of the Gjown going into other lobbies. Even in the ranks of Labour there will be fond farewells. Air. AlcLeod and Air. Lee will be thrust rudely into same division lobby. Perhaps they will bury the hatchet somewhere in the ouster darkness.