WHAT PARLIAMENT COSTS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 8280, 23 October 1905, Page 3

WHAT PARLIAMENT COSTS.

Seven Hundred Pounds a Day

Parliament is generally recognised to be a particularly expensive kind of proceeding. There is a vague idea current that the cost of the talk is about £40 an hour, and that when some prosy member is uttering useless remarks to Hanmrd in the presence of about fifteen sleeping members at three o'clock in the morning he is an extravagant circumstance. How expensive Parliament really is, however, is not generally suspected. A return presented to the House this week giving particulars of the cost of our legislative machinery contains figures that almost incline one to the thought that the people might all be fatter and better off if Parliament were abolished and Society was regulated by the possessor of the knottiest club and biggest axe. The average cost per day of the sitting of Parliament in respect of that expenditure, the amount of which varies with the duration of the session, is set down at £46 2s 9d. The average cost of printing Jlansard is about £C 4 per day. Then there are the fixed expenses, such as the honorarium of members, the salaries of officers of the House, and the expenses which do not vary with the length of the session, but go on irrespective of whether the atmosphere is being used up by talkative members or not. This is not given in the return presented to Parliament, but as the members alone draw about £40,000, it may be set down at nearly £50,000. The average number of sitting days per session is about eighty, so that altogether the cost of the Parliamentary institution per sitting day works out at somewhere over Seven Hundred Pounds a day.— Post.