AN EXTRAORDINARY REMIT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 81, 5 April 1930, Page 17 (Supplement)

AN EXTRAORDINARY REMIT

It will be recalled that much dissatisfaction was expressed—especially by civil servants—when members of Parliament lasi session voted themselves a bonus of £1(10 apiece. A few members, including Mr Coates (Leader of the Opposition) declined to accept any extra remuneration. In the Labour ranks alone was there unanimity in taking the bonus. Most of the electors were prepared to admit that members of Parliament were underpaid rather than over-paid. What they held, however, was that it was wrong for the politicians to help themselves to exn-a reI muneration. seeing that it had been laid down that the strain on the national finances would not permit higher wages to be paid to public servants in the lower grades. But, as it so happened, members of the Labour Party turned a deaf ear to all complaints in connection with the voting of the bonus in question. And now comes the unkindest cut of all. There will come before the Labour Party annual conference a remit to the offer; that Labour M.’sP. should have over 50 per cent of any bonus or increase in salary received by them to swell the party’s national fighting fund! It is, of course, not at all likely that the remit will be adopted, and. maybe, some very hard things will be said about its authors. The remit, in effect, asks the delegates at the Labour Conference to affirm that £5O would have amounted to a sufficiently large bonus to meet the needs of Parliamentarians. That, of course, is not what it aims at. In other words, its authors reckon that every Labour candidate should make a donation of the other £5O to the party’s fighting funds. The general body of the electors will be amazed at the effrontery behind the remit. If it wore to be agreed to. it would mean that the Labour Party approved the principle that its members should, in assisting to have the remuneration for Parliamentary duties raised, insist on the raid made on the public purse being sufficiently extensive to enable each oi’ them to reward it with 50 per cent, of the extra amount! The suggestion is immoral and it is easy to forecast that it. will occasion sonic very straight talk for, apart from the general question, the contention has frequently been stressed by Labour members that Parliamentary work is not even now by any means overpaid, a considerable portion of the honorarium requiring to be sacrificed in meeting demands for subscriptions and for donations.—Gisborne Times,