COMIC RELIEF

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 713, 12 July 1929, Page 14

COMIC RELIEF

Scot Gives New Turn to Politics MR. McDOUGALL’S HOUR (THE SUN'S Parliamentary Reporter) PARLIAMENT BLDGS... Thursday. The curtain was rung up In the House of Representatives tonight on a one-hour comedy turn that might have graced the halls of vaudeville. The comedian-in-chief was one David McDougall, member of Parliament for the constituency of Mataura, and to say that he brought down the House would be to gild the lily. He was the star turn, and if he had worn his tartan waistcoat, which, by the way, he has discarded, and carried a curly stick, his performance would not have disgraced Sior Harry Lauder on a farewell performance. Early in the day the word went round that Mr. McDougall was to speak for the first time, and the advent of the Gaelic heckler to the political battleground was awaited with bated breath. He did not disappoint his public, mixing Rabelaisian humour with passages that had an authentic Biblical ring. Rolling a sonorous R, and taking the House right into his confidence, he kept members awake and chuckling throughout his turn. As the vaudeville notices say, there was not a dull moment in the show. It was not exactly politics. No, it was not politics. It was a pawky, often coarse, disquisition on all sorts of things by a Scot “wha didna care a hoot for Coates and his Opposition.” One cannot give his speech in full, but one can give a few of the highlights which made the House chuckle hysterically and the crowded galleries rock. “The reason for Sir Charles Fergusson’s popularity is that he hails frae the land o’ the heath and the heather, the land where peace and goodwill abound.” Referring to his thunderous “No” iu response to the motion that Mr. Coates’s time be extended, he said: “I, in my simplicity, said ‘no’ to an extension of time. I have regretted it since. I did not do it for a reason of antagonism, but because I had heard so much about unemployment that I wanted to get on with the. business of the House. (Labour hear, hears.) I now understand that the debate is to let oil the gas of the session, otherwise it gets stored up and might blow up and blow the House to pieces. It might blow the roof of the chamber off and pull down the pillars of the temple. If there is another extension of time I assure you that I will hold my peace and suffer in grief and pain until the end of the Parliament." Referring to the booming of Mr. Coates, Mr. Speaker, I know a little song, won’t you let me sing it?” Permission was refused, whereupon Mr. McDougall intoned “Save him from his friends, save him from his friends, my only plea, twixt God and me, is save him from his friends.” • • • “The Leader of the Opposition went and laid his political sins and iniquities at the feet of Sir Joseph who, in his humble and kindly way, said, ‘I freely forgive you, brother; go and sin no more.’ If I were in the same mess as that, and could do that, I would go out with the pipes over my shoulder playing ‘The Cock o’ the North,’ and leaving political muddlers behind me.” Referring to photographs in a pamphlet on the Taupo railway “two great big turnips here were grown where there was a dead sheep the year before.” • * * “When the wool kings of Canterbury wanted to stock up their runs they took a ramble down to Southland when the moon was full.” “Did ye ever see a Scotsman open his mouth when he didn't want something?” • , V “A man said to me that a man could have two farms if he could work them. Why shouldn’t a man have two wives then if he can keep them and look after them?” Quoting a French definition of British colonisation, “John Bull sends to the native a missionary to convert him, brandy to divert him, and when he is diverted a pole is set up and the Union Jack is run up and they sing ‘Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow,’ and then ‘God Save the King’ and then the benediction. If the natives did not submit they send a gunboat as Reform did to Samoa and shoot them down.” Mr. A. M. Samuel (Thames): What nationality are you? “A military man that trots about with as much gear on him as a trotting horse.” “Under the Liberal Government I built up a home and brought up 13 children. I defy a man to do that under a Tory Government.” In an appeal to the House to get on with the business and give relief to those unfortunate people, with little hungry children, who are unable to feed them, he said, “All the talk and piffle of the Opposition wouldn’t fill the 'belly of one hungry child.” At the end Mr. McDougall took Mr. Speaker into his confidence and thanked him about four times for the latitude he had given him. He thanked the House for its courteous hearing, but -was mildly regretful that there were no interjections.