FUN IN PARLIAMENT

Taranaki Daily News, 8 August 1930, Page 9

FUN IN PARLIAMENT

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SAVING MONEY ON AMUSEMENTS. Periodically Mr. D. McDougall, Government member for Mataura, provides tho House of Representatives with a little comic relief, and his contribution to the Budget debate on Wednesday evening showed him still to be possessed of quaint and daring descriptive faculties. Mr. McDougall launched out quietly into the waters of debate, but it was not many minutes before he was advising another member to get a Plunket nurse to look after him.

The fun then became fast and furious. Mr. McDougall declared that had the Reform Party been swept off the Treasury benches 12 years ago like chaff before the wind New Zealand would have been millions of pound? better off. It was impossible to reform a Tory. “The only way,” he told an amazed House, “is to bring a Tory to the penitent form and‘let him confess his sins bo that he may he born again.” According to Mr. McDougall, the late Sir Joseph Ward left a surplus of £17,000,000 when he left the National Ministry in 1919, but that had now gone. The Reform Party had given the money to its friends by buying high-priced -land.

Mr. A. M. Samuel (Reform —Thames): That remark i<? • worthy of you.

BENEFIT TO POOR PEOPLE

Discussing the imposition of an amusement tax on the cheaper tickets Mr. McDougall said it would be a good thing for the poor people. ‘‘lf you make it so they cannot go it will be much more profitable,” he said. “When they go to the pictures they come out and the money is gone, but if they do not go they will have more money for clothes and food.” The subject reminded Mr. McDougall that he had recently been to the pictures. “It was on a Sunday night and it was not a picture to be shown on a Sunday night,” he said. “I say that, and I am no eaint.” The Leader of the Opposition, the Right Hon. J. G. Coates; What did it cost? Mr. McDougall: Nothing; It was a free show. (Laughter.) “I must ®ay it was the first time 1 had seen a lady who had both a white le" and a black leg,” he continued. ‘ She came out and kicked almost as high as this chandelier (Mr. McDougall pointed to the roof of the Chamber to give an approximate idea of the prodigiousness of the performance).

NO NEED TO BLUSH.

"I said to my friend, ‘What about netting home?’ He said, ‘No, it is too interesting.’ I thought if it did not make him blush, why should it make me blush? So I sat still, too. I would not go again even if it was another free show.” It next occurred to Mr. McDougall to explain his direct manner of speaking. ‘‘l have been told that to be a successful politician you should cultivate the habit of saying what you do not think, and 4 v inking what you do not say,” he said. “I like to say what I think. If that pleases the people I will be pleased, too, and if it does not please the people I will still be pleased, so there is nothing lost whichever way it goes.”

“It Is usual to blame our schools and colleges for the disfavour in which agriculture is held by our young people,” said Professor A. B. Fitt in the course of an address at Auckland. “The drift to the towns is a problem confronting every civilised country to-day, but the causes are not educational. They are rather the economic and social disabilities which at present characterise the life of the farmer. What we want is a complete revision of our system of agriculture, not an educational, ‘bias’ that will probably result in ’Milling.”