"MERE FIGUREHEADS"

Waipa Post, Volume 45, Issue 3267, 13 December 1932, Page 7

"MERE FIGUREHEADS"

PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEES MR SAMUEL'S ASSERTION

The public thinks that if a select committee is set up it deals with the matters of Parliament. It is time they realised that nothing of the kind happens. Thus said Mr A. M. Samuel, MP. for Thames, in the House last Tuesday evening when speaking on the Hospital and Charitable Aid Amendment Bill. Mr Samuel was urging that the Bill be submitted to the Public Health Committee, whose function it really was and he pointed out to the Minister of Health that when he was an "ordinary common or garden member of the Public Health Committee he would certainly have felt slighted if such a measure had been brought before the House without first having been submitted to the committee. However, committees were nothing. In most cases committees are absolutely figureheads, and any recommendation they do bring down is very rerely taken cognisance of. The ordinary select committees might just as well be done away with. Parliament itself might just as well be done away with if the Government has a sufficient majority. What is the good of Parliament? It is a sop to democracy. That is all it is. The people think that Parliament .

Mr Speaker: Order! I think I had better bring the honourable member back to the Bill.

Mr Samuel: Perhaps it would be better if I kept off that subject. But I have stated before and I will state again, that committees of this House, whether the Public Health Committee, the Public Petitions Committees, the Education Committee, or any other Committee, have no say in the voice of the Government of this country. I sincerely trust that the Minister of Health will give the Public Health Committee an opportunity to prove its worth, to justify its existence, to be able to say, "Well, we have been appointed a committee to consider questions of Public Health and we are going thoroughly into this measure."