The Timaru Herald SATURDAY, JUNE 24, 1939 Parliament Again

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVI, Issue 21380, 24 June 1939, Page 8

The Timaru Herald SATURDAY, JUNE 24, 1939 Parliament Again

NEXT week New Zealand’s 26th Parliament will open its first session in Wellington and once again the political interests of the country will be centred in the capital. According to general anticipations the coming session will be rather less spectacular than others of the Labour regime, chiefly because the Government can no longer be in generous giving mood. In the past three years bounty has been distributed with prodigal hands and unthinking hearts, but now the more disconcerting business of footing the bill has to be faced. The Government will have to find more money for defence; the Consolidated Fund will be called upon for its substantial contribution towards the cost of Social Security. There are these considerable items of new expenditure to be met out of an income which must be diminished markedly from now on because of the import restrictions. A year ago the Government was on the box seat; it could jeer at the Opposition for expressions of uncertainty about the future, but to-day the position is different: disturbing prophecies have been fulfilled within the past few months. Throughout the coming session the Government will be on the defensive and adroit debating will be necessary to persuade people that the country’s affairs have not been mismanaged to a fairly serious extent. The Government’s intentions were good when it set out, as it thought, to lift the living standards, but in the process obvious realities were overlooked.

While the Opposition will have material enough to keep debates lively, it must be suggested that the function of the Opposition is not merely to oppose. The best way in which it can win over wavering sections of the people —and there are many of them now—is to make practical suggestions for the betterment of conditions in the Dominion. After all, party allegiance takes second place to the country’s welfare and no true New Zealander would have any pleasure in the nation’s difficulties because they provide him with good debating points in Parliament. The dominant desire of all should be to correct those faults which are causing trouble and which may cause even greater trouble in the future. As Parliamentary sessions go on what is so often an extremely weary way, many people begin to think that too much time is being wasted in talk. They envy those who appear to have no more exacting work to perforin than that of hurling interjections across the floor of the House and making occasional speeches of doubtful quality. There is a tendency at times for politicians—irrespective of party —to become the victims of unthinking criticism. The critics forget that free speech, and good quantities of it, too, is an essential part of democratic government. The irrereverent often do not hesitate to describe the House of Representatives as a “talking shop,” but in doing so they overlook the fact that the House of Representatives is an assembly which has to act through debate. • Its primary function is the talking one.

When all is considered the politician’s life is not such an enviable one. His critics are many and if he happens to be ambitious there is a peculiar difficulty which has been mentioned by an English writer: “Of all the open-fighting careers politics is the most ruthless and the most exacting. It is a fight in which your friend more than your opponent is the competitor for the prize you seek. Hence for the ambitious man the society of an opponent is more restful than the society of a friend.” In the end, too, the final responsibility for curing the nation’s ills lies with the politicians. It is true that they often are responsible for the ills, but they are equally responsible for the remedy. When the coming session grows wearisome, and when progress seems needlessly delayed, it is well to think as kindly as possible of what the late F. S. Oliver described as: “these decent, hard-working, cheerful, valiant politicians, whose mysterious business it is to manage our affairs by breaking one another’s heads.”