"DEAD AS A DOOR NAIL"

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11215, 22 October 1914, Page 5

"DEAD AS A DOOR NAIL"

UPPER HOUSE BILL

REFORM'S STONY SILENCE. (Special to the " Star/') . WELLINGTON, October 22. b General opinion in the lobbies to-day is that the Legislative Council Bill, the Government's great reform measure, is as dead-as the proverbial door nail. It was obvious directly the Bill got into committee last night that the Prime Minister would be pleased to see it gracefully killed and decently buried. Mr Massey was glad enough to accept any amendment that would not absolutely flout his previous determination to have the Bill, tho whilo Bill, and nothing but the Bill, and his supporters kept up a stony silence, which showed principally their confidence in the diplomacy of their leader. The effect of Mr M'Combs's amendments, which were eagerly seized upon by .the Prime Minister, will be to bring the elected Council into existence three years earlier than the Bill intended, but Sir Joseph Ward's proposal to have the whole of the*;party members elected in 1917 would have given the country a thoroughly democratic seconcl chamber- in that year, and so have been as great an improvement upon Mr M'Combs's scheme as Mr M'Combs's was on the Government's.

The deletion of Clause 21, the clause which the " Lyttelton Times" has so vigorously , attackod, shattered the, whole basis of the' Government's scheme, but the failure of the House to provide any other plan for filling casual vaoancies has left tho possibility of the Council becoming ineffective or even extinct before the elective system comes into operation. Mr Massey must b a duller even than his ungenerous critics suppose if ho has missed this point, and it is more likely that he passed over the defect in the sure and certain hope that it would assist in the scanty despatch of the measure. amusing incident in the committee proceedings last night was the readiness of the Prime Minister to accept Mr Newman's amendment making women eligible for seats in, the Council. It was the thinnest of thin pretences, and the- sixteen members of the Reform Party who did not accompany their leader into the lobby may be forgiven for their very courageThe Bill is No. 10 on the order paper to-day.