THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1913. PARTY GOVERNMENT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 23 September 1913, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1913. PARTY GOVERNMENT.

In a recent issue we had something to say about the travesty on legislation that is being enacted in the name of party government in New Zealand. We sought to show how utterly impossible it was to legislate fdr the good of the people when the supreme passion in our politicians was a lust for power and the emoluments of office. Everything—law, order, defence, finance, education, and the rest of it—is subordinated to a consideration for self, for the reigns of government, for the facility for exercising acts of patronage. Dare any person deny that this is 'so? What has been at the root of the obstruction of the last week or two? Has there been any great principle of statesmanship involved? Why all the bitter personalities, the spleen and recrimination that are indulged in ? Why the pandering to sectional interests? Is it not directly attributable to the dagrading party system that dominates our system of government? But, someone will ask, is not the same sort of thing happening in every part of the British Empire? Unhappily it is; but surely that is no justification for its existence. The situation in Australia is similar to that in New Zealand. It is, indeed, more acute. And here is what the Melbourne Age has to say about it: —"It is indeed a charming situation. Parliament has reached a dead end. The machinery of legislation has completely broken down. Parliament is no longer an institute of government; it is a circus arena wholly captured and controlled by party gladiators', who conceive that their public duty begins and s ends with the noble task of vilifying each other and frustrating the will of the people. Even measures that the entire nation clamours for are treated as pawns in the party game. If Liberals propose them, Labour denounces them as black. If Labour were in office they would be white, but black, alas! to the Liberals. The Montagus and the Capulets bestride the political stage scowling at one another ; and the people, like Mercutio, are thrust with the rapiers of both. Victimised and suffering, Mercutio's mordant exclamation, "A plague on both your Houses!" springs unbidden to our lips. But we must do more than merely lament and mutter expletives. As Mr Hill says, 'A change is needed in the Parliamentary machine.' We all know that; have known it long; and we know exactly the sort of alteration that is needed. The Initiative Referendum is a familiar concept now. All olasses are leaning towards it, and yearning for it. Parliament must be put under the continuous control of tfce electors. At the next election—and an election already looms before us —the Initiative Referendum most be the first and most imperative people's demand. Tt in no nse waiting any longer for

members of Parliament to reform the machine df their own volition. The people must take tho business into their own hands. Every great reform has sprung from the people — wrested at.their primal instance from the strife of factions in Parliament. Tho system of party government must go. It has had its day. It has proved itself to demonstration a deadly fob to national progress, and there only remains io pronounce its doom and to destroy it for ever by means of the Initiative Referendum."