The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND TUESDAY, AUGUST 5, 1930 DISCONTENT WITH POLITICS

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1042, 5 August 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND TUESDAY, AUGUST 5, 1930 DISCONTENT WITH POLITICS

I AW-MAKING in many countries lias become nearly as notorious *•* as law-breaking. Almost everywhere these days there is much dissatisfaction with the work of legislators and the bad effects, of party politics. The only country in which something good is being said about the Parliamentary system is Ceylon, where a new Legislature lias been established on an experimental principle and with a. promising method—a very small Parliament will try to legislate as a representative committee instead of wrangling and muddling along as a house divided within itself. Discontent with politics is acute at the moment in Great Britain, where Parliament has been prorogued after a disappointing session, the Labour Government having failed to make anything like the legislative progress it had planned to achieve. The MacDonald Ministry cannot he blamed for such failure for the simple reason that it was not permitted to carry out a programme which aimed at effecting radical changes in the nation’s industrial and social systems. Seven of the Government’s principal Bills at least were so contentious in purpose that no administrative party without an overwhelming majority could have hoped to slam them into the Statute Book. Following on a relatively poor sessional record there is now a vehement revival of the demand for reform of Parliamentary procedure and even for the abolition of the existing party system. It has been asserted by men not'given to Socialism that the legislative machine hinders rather than promotes essential social change. Too many parties at political variance with one another either “monkey” with the mechanism or throw sand into the bearings. Is there available a remedy for a political condition which fails to give satisfaction either to contending parties or. the people whom rival politicians so ruthlessly exploit? Mr. G. Bernard Shaw, in his favourite role of Gamaliel to Socialists, has gained some publicity for having proffered instruction to members of the Independent Labour Party’s summer school. The dramatist really does not deserve either prominence or credit for his suggestions that the Labour Government should produce a new Reform Bill providing for the establishment of a new constitution and the abolition of the party system, and giving home rule to England, Scotland and Wales. On this occasion the teacher merely repeated an old lesson that has been taught often enough to the British Labour Party. Time and again Lord Passfield and his wife, Mrs. Sidney Webb, have argued in favour of replacing the present Parliamentary system by Hie establishment of two co-ordinate Parliaments, one to deal with “political” affairs, the other attending to “social” matters. Then, some time ago, the Speaker’s Conference on Devolution actually got. so far as to devise plans for a system of home rule for England, Scotland and Wales. Other reformers have advocated the introduction of regional assemblies under an Imperial Parliament. Nothing has been done with any of the schemes, and Mr. Shaw has failed to make them appear as being more hopeful and more' helpful than the party system of government and legislation. Perhaps the rank growth of national discontent with politics will force mediocre Parliaments to reform themselves in some way not yet discovered, but it is difficult to foresee any system that would eliminate the clash of parties. It is true, of coufse, that the processes of Parliamentary service are evolutionary, where they are not the opposite, and also that the need of legislative methods for dealing with many complex difficulties is greater today than possibly at any time in political history. Indeed legislators are so eager to make laws that, in their haste, they merely succeed with a final scamper in making very had ones. It would he more beneficial for every country blighted with a Parliamentary party system if an effort were made to teach and train politicians to become better legislators, content with doing a little first-class work, rather than striving exhaustively and clumsily to create a record for bad legislation. In any case the taxpayers are tired of the zeal and errors of rash experimenters.