POLITICAL TRICKSTERS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1215, 20 January 1886, Page 5

POLITICAL TRICKSTERS.

From a leading article in the " Brisbane Courier " we learn an alarming piece of news. The members of the Queensland Assembly, who voted themselves £7000 the other day to reimburse them the expenses they were put to in attending Parliament, are not dividing the money fairly. Payment is made by the day and according to the distance travelled. Town members — i.e., those who live in Brisbane — are paid only for the days on which they actually attend the House. The member for a remote country district, who is absent from home from the beginning to tbe end of the session, draws £2 2s for Sunday, Mouday, and Saturday, as well as for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, which are the sitting days. The maximum allowance any one member can obtain is £200, which practically limits the time it is worth his while to stay in Brisbane to less than 100 days. At an earlier stage in the history of Queensland the session waß determined by the arrival of lambing and shearing season, and every country member made off for his station on the receipt of the first tidings from his overseer, just as the English Parliament makes it its business to rise in time for the grouse season. What stirs our contemporary is the rumors that are afloat — serious rumors, as to the nature of which it gives no clue. One little incident is mentioned. There is a member who drew continuous pay for the session as the representative of a remote electorate, and when he afterwards visited his constituents he was selected to respond for "Our Visitors." A member on visiting terms only, with his district can scarcely be qualified to draw the maximum allowance. Besides the daily pay, they also receive their expenses going and coming, and it should be stated whether or not this visiting representative put in a claim for passage-money before setting out from Brisbane to look up his constituents. Two conscientious members think it wrong to pocket their allowance, but they draw it nevertheless, "for the purpose of expending it on charity," which is very good of them ; but we Ihink more of the men who straightforwardly go for what Mr Gardiner calls " the sugar." Spending the money in charity is an indirect way of buying the support of the district, as has been remarked where generosity of the same kind was practised in Victoria. — "Australasian."