The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY, JULY 12, 1929 PARLIAMENT AT ITS WORST

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 713, 12 July 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY, JULY 12, 1929 PARLIAMENT AT ITS WORST

THERE still is time to make a good recovery, but, so far, the present House of Representatives has proved itself to be the worst Parliament in the country’s history. It already has been in session long enough to have done some meritorious work, but it has chosen to do nothing except waste public money on futile chatter. To begin with, there was not even the atiadow of an excuse for a long debate on the formal Address-in-Reply to the ViceRegal Speech at the opening of Parliament. Nothing more was called for than a respectful respozise; a simple “Thank you, Sir,” would have sufficed. Every member of the House knew perfectly well from the beginning of the session that there was to be no attempt in the form of a no-confidence motion to test a weak Government’s precarious hold on administrative power. In the staring light of that knowledge, all parties should have agreed, as an exercise of essential economy, if for no other or better reason, to “cut the cackle and get to the ’osses.” The Labozfr Party alone urged an abandonment of the present deplorable debate, hut its counsel of perfection probably was suspect because that party, on the introduction of the first financial Bill, talked and talked until the country was sick tired of tedious propagandic loquacity. There can be only two reasons for an unpardonable prolongation of a purposeless debate. Either the Government, as usual, has no legislative proposals ready for Parliament’s consideration, or neither the United Party nor the Reform Opposition cares, a tinker’s curse for economy or the real political needs of the Dominion. In the one case the Prime Minister merely smiled at Labour’s appeal for a quick end to mouthing extravagance, while the Leader of the Opposition again aired the stale Asquithian exhortation to “Wait and see!” And so the muddy spate of political talk rushes along to a sea of nothingness. Occasionally, it is true, the parties have got a laugh out of the rubbish, while one crude member last evening surprised and embarrassed the "House and gallery with a coarseness of phrases which fortunately has been rare in Parliamentary society. It is to be hoped that the United Party will discipline its representative. Mr. Baldwin has succeeded in bringing broccoli into politics, but no one should try to introduce the piggery. It has been made painfully clear during the debate that this new Parliament is without statesmanship and constructive political ability. For this lack there is, of course, an obvious reason. The Ministry generally is in the apprenticeship stage with everything to learn and a great deal to forget. The official Opposition finds itself in a new role, and necessarily is amateurish in its practice. Labour is the most competent party in political tactics, but it unfortunately is more concerned about its own advantages and the interests of its own class than about national benefit and national progress. As far as individual debaters may be considered, it would have been better for the Government if none of its Ministers had spoken at all. They merely emphasised their administrative immaturity and demonstrated that they are automatons in a one-man Administration. And their veteran Leader is handicapped by the increasing discovery every day that he is not able to perform his pre-election promises, He has been compelled by inexorable circumstances to admit that cheap money cannot be obtained and also that his confident assertion about advancing loans to everybody at 4f per cent, without a penny cost to the taxpayer was akin to the crock of gold at the rainbow’s root. Then, too, the unemployment problem not only baffles Sir Joseph Ward, but has made him wonder, in the teeth of snarling demands of State money for this, that and the next thing, “if he is alive or not.” The harassed statesman has only himself to blame for his predicament. Now, when all parties realise that there is a limit to political optimism and vain boasting, they should avoid a waste of time and public money on shallow talk and devote their collective wisdom and energy to the manifold tasks of making bad things a little better at least. There is ample scope left for the development and practice of statesmanship in the Government and of good legislative work in Parliament as a whole. Something useful may come out of the proposal to inaugurate a measure of daylight sittings, the adoption of regular working hours and the avoidance of long speeches and all-night wranglings. The country gladly will support these innovations so long as they promise to provide better Parliamentary work. So far, a month of Parliament with a flood of talk has not yielded business or political ideas worth the salary of one Minister. Is it too much to appeal to legislators for an effort at removing the fair reproach that, today, they represent the Dominion’s worst Parliament? MORE WORK, LESS TALK GOOD chairmen are horn, not made, so it is more in sorrow than in anger that the protracted wrangling which terminated in the application of the closure at last night’s City Council meeting is traced to the present Mayor and Deputy-Mayor. Firm control buttressed by close familiarity with the rules of debate has not been known in the Council Chamber since the days when Sir James Gunson was Mayor, and the result is that among - a number of councillors there is an ever-growing tendency to take liberties. The amount of time devoted last evening to a series of virtually fruitless discussions laid emphasis on this tendency, which so far conflicts with the ordinary business principle of getting on with the job that one of the newer councillors, a business man in thought and action, was goaded to the limits of impatience and was able to use his knowledge of the Standing Orders to force an adjournment before midnight. In most circumstances such an action on the part of a new councillor would have been presumptuous. The closure is a legitimate hut harsh method of limiting debate and, while it is occasionally a necessity, it often involves an injustice to members who have had no opportunity of speaking. Consequently the use of the closure should be avoided as much as possible. Its suggestion of “gagging” is repellent to democratic ideals of free speech. But the circumstances last night were such that Councillor G. W. Hutchison was justified in the steps he took to terminate a meeting that had resolved itself into a conflict between the loquacity of a section of the councillors and the too-elastic control of the Deputy-Mayor. The fact is that the City Council has fallen into bad habits, and that some such methods as Councillor Hutchison adopted seem the only means of enforcing discipline. Perhaps there may be a faint sense of regret tbat the closure thus applied can extend only until next meeting. The accumulated business to be dealt with on that occasion will perhaps convince the over-zealous minority of the futility of its efforts to labour lost causes. The supporters of Mr. Bartram’s motion that the celebrated war-book, “All Quiet on the Western Front,” be placed on the shelves of the public library, registered a proper objection to the application of a fastidious censorship. But the attitude of the majority of the council was almost a foregone conclusion from the start, and there was no point whatever in further resistance.