WHEN CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20673, 11 March 1937, Page 8

WHEN CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES.

All who remember the severe castigation the Minister of Public Works poured upon two Nationalist Members of Parliament for southern electorates who absented themselves on the. occasion of the official visit of the Minister to their districts, must have trembled when it became known that the Member for Timaru had absented himself from his constituency on the occasion of the official visit of the Minister of Internal Affairs. Fortunate, indeed, was the conference of the Municipal Association of New Zealand that the Minister of Internal Affairs and not the Minister of Public Works was scheduled to address the assembled delegates. Mr Semple would have felt slighted. But not so Mr Parry! The Municipal Conference was certainly entitled to have the attendance of the Member for Timaru, but no one seemed very much perturbed. Doubtless the unconcerned attitude of the visiting Minister gave the conference a lead. The reason for the Member’s absence is interesting because of the strong objections raised by Mr Semple owing to the absence of Nationalist members, on precisely the same sort of business. The Member for Timaru was visiting Wellington to attend a meeting of the executive of the New Zealand Labour Party in preparation for the annual conference. Obviously circumstances alter cases, particularly when the persons involved happen to be the Leader of the National Party and one of bis chief lieutenants on the one side, and the president of the New Zealand Labour Party on the other. But perhaps Mr Parry is not a stickler for Parliamentary etitquette, particularly when the absentee is about the Labour Party’s business!