PARLIAMENT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8529, 6 September 1907, Page 5

PARLIAMENT.

By Telegraph—Own Correspondent.)

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

WELLINGTON, September 5

The rebuff which the Government met with late last night in connection with the machinery section of the schedule of the Tariff Bill led to the expectation on the part of some members and the general public that an important Ministerial statement would be made in the House this afternoon, but, as soon as formal business was concluded, the House was moved into Committee of Supply without a word being uttered as to the political situation.

The vote £38,959 (Public Health) was taken first and was discussed for the remainder of the afternoon. Mr J. T. M. Hornsby (Wairarapa) wanted to know what was being done to admit indigent patients to the sanatoria of the colony, and complained of the inability of married men to get admittance thereto because they were unable to pay two guineas per week. Would it not be better, he queried, to admit these men to a curative process whereby they could be rendered fit to continue their occupations? The Hon. G. Fowlds, in reply, contended that the hospitals were meeting, to a large extent, the views of Mr Hornsby, but he held that if patients from" Masterton or other districts were "sent to the sanatoria districts, they should pay for treatment.

Mr A. W. Hogg's rejoinder to this was that those who could pay two guineas per week were able to provide their own medical attention, and need rot trouble about a sanatorium. It was, he argued, inhuman to exclude destitute persons from the sanitoria of the colony, and he cited an instance where a Wairarapa resident had been compelled by the Health Department to give up his business and yet was unable to obtain admission to the Otaki sanatorium. The Minister admitted the hardship in the instance mentioned, but threw the blame on the local Hospital Board for not finding the requisite two guineas per week, which he described as a paltry sum. Mr W. Symes caused a smile by remarking that it was as hard to get country patients into the Cambridge sanatorium as into Heaven.

The discussion was then chiefly devoted to the neglect of the proper medical treatment of natives. EVENING SITTING. In the House in the evening the Health Department vote was passed unaltered. The vote for Mental Hospitals and the Charitable Department (£100,024) was next taken, but so far there is nothing of special interest in the discussion.