The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. Gloucester Street and Cathedral Square CHRISTCHURCH NEW ZEALAND. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1, 1931. NOT TO BE “DONE.”

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 78, 1 April 1931, Page 8

The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. Gloucester Street and Cathedral Square CHRISTCHURCH NEW ZEALAND. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1, 1931. NOT TO BE “DONE.”

TTOR LACK of a better weapon with which to belabour the Prime Minister, certain Reform journals have hailed the enactment of the closure as a surrender to Labour, although that is the very last thing they should say of it. Their argument is that it would have been better to put up with organised obstruction and let the “ forms of the House ” be used for the defeat or postponement of the Government proposals, merely for the sake of securing a party advantage, to be used selfrighteously at the general election. From a purely party point of view they are probably right, but they have misjudged Mr Forbes once again in imagining that a party advantage of this nature would have any place in his calculations. Mr Forbes expects to be judged on his performances and not on his professions. Unlike Mr Coates, whom an intelligent foreigner in a slip of the pen described “ as the man who gets done,” Mr Forbes is not going to be beaten on party tactics. He has things to be done, and he is going to do them. A QUESTION ANSWERED. A POINT that Reform critics of ■L*- the closure overlook is that the motion was not made a noconfidence issue, and Reform members almost unanimously voted for it. They could not have done otherwise when, as Mr Forbes has said, the obstructionists were throwing sand in the bearings. The “ forms of tlie House ” would have enabled Labour to carry out the unconstitutional course of obstructing the will of the majority. If majorities must rule, and we take it the Labour members subscribe to that principle, the question then arises as to whether the obstruction to the Finance Bill could be regarded as reasonable discussion. On this point the Labour Party have supplied the answer themselves, for they announced that they would use all the “ forms of the House ” to defeat the measure. Without the closure the use of “ the forms of the House ” implied minority rule, and from that unconstitutional and intolerable position the Prime Minister has rescued the Parliamentary machinery of the country. ENGLAND’S SPRING HERE. r T\HE gift of bulbs to the city for planting along the river banks suggests that in this matter Christchurch might well take a leaf out of Dunedin’s book. There the daffodils blooming in the grass in the city reserves provide one of the beautiful sights of the city in the spring time, and one or two small towns have taken up the idea, even planting whole hillsides with bulbs supplied from private gardens. This is the time for sorting spring beds and borders, and private persons who would otherwise throw away their superfluous bulbs might remember that the city beautiful lies about their garden gate. If the Reserves Committee held a bulb week they would collect sufficient to make our parks as bright as England’s spring. A BIG SAVING. OINCE trolley buses dispense with rails, the Tramway Board, on the new trackless route to Shirley, is disembarrassed of the liability which applies to ordinary tramway routes, of maintaining the roadway within the rails and eighteen inches beyond them. That and the saving on track maintenance suggest that what is good for Shirley may be good for Sydenham or St Albans, especially as trolley buses have both of the advantages of the petrol bus in comfort and curbside loading, and neither of the disadvantages of noise or foul gas. It has been objected that the City Council should not have to meet the whole cost of the extra road maintenance involved, but this extra cost is so incalculably small that it is not worth pursuing. Indeed, the roading authority will be much better off in the long run with trolley buses, not only because of the forced economy that better roads represent, but because of the elimination of that greatest of all roaddestroyers, the tramway rail.