TE AWAMUTU COURIER Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays MONDAY, 29th AUGUST, 1949 the upper house

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 79, Issue 7100, 29 August 1949, Page 4

TE AWAMUTU COURIER Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays MONDAY, 29th AUGUST, 1949 the upper house

THOSE qualified to speak on such matters declare that the private member’s Bill to abolish the Legislative Council, having reached a point of debate in Parliament when the Budget appeared is now removed to a position on the Order Paper that it is unlikely to be taken any further in the present session. It baffles imagination how it can happen that Parliamentary time can be so “managed” as to avoid critical decisions on controversial issues. On an earlier occasion a similar Bill was stood aside on what in the public interpretation was little more than a technicality, and now again it suggests over-much tinkering with a serious proposal so so as to resort under Standing Orders for escape from a deliberate vote. There is much of very real and farreaching concern in a proposal to do away with a revisory Chamber, and quite obviously the question, even if shelved for the present, is certainly not disposed of. Time was when the present Government strongly advocated the purposes sought in the present Bill and if consistency meant anything at all then very certainly pledges of former campaigns could mean that a private member’s Bill would have full Government support. But there is clearly an evident desire to avoid any decisive vote. To the extent that debate has been carried it seems fairly clear that there is not really a desire to remove entirely a revisionary Chamber; more purposeful would be the re-constitution of the Upper House. As it is considered to-day, and in the way it works, there is scant recognition of “the other place” in the Lower House and certainly is there little respect of it in the electorate. In fact, most people wonder what purpose such an Upper House is expected to serve—would no, in fact, know that it existed were it not for the knowledge that successive Governments have made it a place for the appointment of political friends. If abolition meant the end of that sort of patronage and favour then surely most people would welcome those “running shoes” that were once so liberally issued to partisan followers. Mr Fraser’s difficulty to-day is apparent. Quite candidly he informed ,the House that he at one time strongly supported the abolition of the Legislative Council, hut that was. e said, when it was a “Tory Upper House.” But now that it has become a “Labour" Upper House he has to face either inconsistency or the unwelcome duty of ousting his party friends and followers. Apparently loyalty to political adherents counts for more than the welfare of the country. Or can it be supposed that any future Government would he more tolerant or consistent—‘that the Upper House as at present constituted could be more than a ratifying Chamber for any party exercising the rule of Government ? Though the mover of the Bill did not stress the fact, many of his colleagues made it plain to the country that abolition was intended as a necessary Parliamentary step to the reform of the Upper House —a reform that would folly of succesnts qualifying the popular designation of an “ old friends’ home.” The pity is that in the Lower House a serious proposal can be treated in such a flippant manner—that debate can open and continue to a stage when it ends as strangely as this debate has ended. It suggests that the Upper House is now a place in need of some reform—-that public interest can be given a greater meaning, and that less of technical manipulation of the Order Paper can less readily offer resort whereby the people’s elected representatives can find freedom from critical divisions.