NEWS FROM THE CAPITAL

Taranaki Daily News, 18 October 1927, Page 14

NEWS FROM THE CAPITAL

DRIVING TACTICS IN HOUSE THE PRIME MINISTER'S BARK. THE OPPOSITION TOLERANT. ' (From Our Own Correspondent.) Wellington, Oct. 13. The Prime Minister’s threat of last week to push Government measures through Parliament, without regard lo the hours of sitting or the protests of members, has not yet been put into execution. As a matter of fact, the Leader of the House has been more tolerant and conciliatory than usual during the last few days, fencing cheerily inquiries eoncerning the prospects of the Licensing and Gaming Bills and exchanging pleasantries with the humourists on the other side of the Chamber. Doubtless some of his more experienced colleagues have reminded him that politicians in the mass are mere children, and more easily led than driven. It is fairly plain, however, that if Parliament is to be prorogued before the end of November, with a reasonable amount of: work done, it will have to apply itself to business more assiduously than it has been doing during the last three months. So far the Government, with its big majority, has had little difficulty in putting its less contentions measures through the House, but when it brings down its Licensing Bill and frees its followers to vole as they please its real troubles will begin. It is predicted in the lobbies thafin the end the Bill will bo left stranded. " ‘ GAMING AND BIBLE READING. The Gaming Bill and the Religious Exercises-in-Scliool Bill stand in a category apart from the Licensing Bill, and doubtless Mr. Coates is thanking his stars he has nothing to do with them ministerially. The Gaming Bill seeks to legalise the transmission of money to the totalisator from beyond the racecourse, the publication of the amounts of dividends, and various other things that are regarded as abominations by the Nonconformist conscience. The main arguments in favour of these concessions are the need for .increasing the revenue of the racing clubs and the importance of defeating the machinations of the bookmakers. The Dominion maintains that these, ends would be attained by loading the telegraph wires with totalisator investments during the progress of a race meeting and broadcasting the dividends as they were announced at th e machine. No doubt the revenue of the Post and Telegraph Department would be considerably augmented by such a scheme, but it is doubtful if the operations of the bookmakers would be greatly affected by the open road to the totalisator. Hundreds of investors from afar would find it easier to do business with the bookmaker in town than with the machine on the course, and would continue to do TARIFF AND TAXATION. The one thing made obvious by the passage of the Customs Amendment P.ill through the House of Representatives is that the Hon. W. Downie Stewart's tariff revision, whielr was to more than compensate the payers of income tax for their substantially increased rates, is r.ot going to relieve them of a fraction of their additional ’burden. Having as Minister of Finance imposed an additional load of some £250,000 to £300.00(1 upon one section of the community, Mr. Stewart, as Minister of Customs, under the name of “protection,” has proceeded to impose a further load of undefined magnitude upon the whole of the community. Both of these imposts are in addition to the subsidy to the wheat-growers, millers and speculators, which costs the bread-consum-ers some £400.000 or £500,000 a year, and yet gives the country no assurance of a' constant supply. Just what will be the effect of the present tinkering with the Customs tariff can be only conjectured at the moment, i>ut it is certain that it will increase the purchasing cost of every article that is involved in the operation of protection. This is not to say that, protection always is undesirable,' but it is to say that protection will not fulfil the Minister’s undertaking to the taxpayers. BIBLE-IN-SCHOOLS. In giving evidence before the Education Committee of the House of Representatives on Tuesday, Professor H. MacKenzie condemned in robust language the provisions of the Religious Exercises in Schools Bill. To talk of introducing the Bible purely as literature into the State schools was. he said emphatically. absolute twaddle and unworthy of any mind possessing a true sense of pedagogical science or of educational values. The Bill was an outrage on common intelligence and pedagogical science, and if it became law it would sectarianise the national system of education and subsidise to the extent of approximately £175,000 a year a purely -formal and mechanical Protestantism. He had always strongly opposed every effort that would tend to sectarianise the national system of education. He asserted that in most parts of England to this day it was scarcely possible for any teacher not an Anglican to secure a headmastership in a State school. In many parts of Scotland appointment to a headmastership very largely depended upon the brand of Presbyterianism professed by the candidate. Sir Robert Stout, who followed Professor MacKenzie, produced statistics to show that New Zealand's present system of education had produced a more moral people than had the system of any other country.