A POINT OF PRIVILEGE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5655, 28 August 1896, Page 5 (Supplement)

A POINT OF PRIVILEGE.

MR G. J. SMITH AND THE NEW ZEALAND TIMES.

FFeom Our Correspondent.! WELLINGTON. August 25.

A complaint from Mr G. J. Smith stopped the House this afternoon. Mr Smith was attacked in the New Zealand Times on Monday morning for Ins action with respect to the leave of absence to Mr Mackintosh last Friday. The newspaper informed its readers that Mr Smith was asking for the reinstatement of a Christchurch railway-crossing keeper who had been dismissed for drunkenness at the very time that he was seeking to brand Mr Mackintosh for intoxication. This conduct the paper called pharisaic, and it went on to denounce the objection to the terms of leave (supported by medical certificate) as unprecedented and mean. ' Mr Smith seemed to think that a breach of privilege had been committed. He wanted the article read, but the Speaker refused, on the ground that it is not customary to allow comments of the Press to be read in the House. Mr Smith then proceeded to explain that he had not attacked Mr Mackintosh in any way, and that the only reflections upon him|had come from his friends. The Speaker having intimated that he would keep the matter out of the reports of the proceedings, Mr Smith wanted to move a motion of breach of privilege, but the Speaker refused to allow a debate that had ended to be re.-opened, and the House went into committee on the Estimates. Sir R. Stout re-opened the subject of privilege and moved to report progress in order to get the matter discussed in spite of the Speaker. A very acrimonious discussion ensued, in which adverse comments came hard and thick on the Speaker's ruling, but were always stopped by the Chairman. Tho temper of the House was shown by the tie on the motion to report progress. There is a good deal of comment in the lobbies on the tie, which is largely regarded as practically a rebuff to the Speaker. Mr Speaker's course has, I think, been hardly understood by the House. Had Mr Smith brought his motion forward in the first instance as a question of privilege, he would have had it out then and there, but he brought it forward as a matter of personal explanation. He was not permitted to read the article because, according to rule, it is irregular to read articles tr letters referring to debates of the House in the same session. Mr Smith was stopped by the Speaker, according to a decision of Peel's which forbids the introduction of debatable matter in connection with personal explanations. Sir R. Stout and others were not permitted to interfere because another of Peel's decisions confines personal explanations to the persons immediately concerned.

Mr G. J. Smith got his revenge later, when he carried by one vote his motion hostile to the Hokitika Gaol, reducing the vote by ,£IOO. The Committee heckled the Premier for nearly an hour and a half over this item, with the above result.

Mr Smith has intimated his intention to move a motion to-morrow questioning the Speaker's ruling this afternoon.