Parliamentary Jottings.

White Ribbon, Volume 11, Issue 124, 15 September 1905, Page 8

Parliamentary Jottings.

August has been a stormy month in Parliament. The voucher mystery has overshadowed all other business. Mr. Fisher presented affidavits from three clerks in the Christchurch Post Office, w ho professed to have seen and handled a voucher for over passed for reorganising Defence stores in Welling ton, and signed by Captain Seddon. Mr Fisher first applied for a public Commission of Enquiry, and indemnity for the witnesses. Tills liemg refused, the three clerks consented to proceed at their own risk. Hie Treasury officials immediately petitioned for an enquiry, to clear themselves from the suspicion of complicity in a transaction irregular, if not fraudulent. At the same time Captain SaJdon made a written declaration that he had never received any such payment, nor signed any such voucher. The House granted a departmental enquiry by the Audi tor-General, which U-gan on the 14th pf August. It was conducted 111 private. After hearing the Christchurch witnesses, now nurnleering tour, and examining all the Treasury iKXiks. the Auditor-General reported on August 30th that no trace of the alleges! payment to Captain Seddon could l>e found Mr Fisher and Mr 1 aylor still demand a public enquiry, ami a guarantee for the witnesses, whose testimony regarding the voucher remains unshaken. Mr Fisher has apologised to Captain Seddon, however, though maintaining that his name must have l>een used without his (Captain Seddon's) knowledge in such a manner as to justify the action he himself and his witnesses had taken. The mystery seems impenetrable. On the one hand, Captain Seddon's denial cannot but be taken as conclusive, with the Auditor-

General's report. On the other hand, it is not to l>e imagined that four civil servants of good character and long ex* perience would Peril Name and Po ition, and set aside their official pledges of secrecy, without the full warrant of their own senses. Whether it end here or not, the whole affair is deeply regrettable. All round it has sharpened personal feeling in the House, shaken public confidence l>oth in the civil service and in the New Party, and is likely in some degree to handicap reform at the ( oils in December. It can at least l»e said that the Premier and Captain Stddon have acted with dignity, and that Messrs. Taylor and Fisher, with their witnesses, have acted with courage. In the interests of both, and for the honour of our public life, it is hoped that a fuller enquiry may le granted. The Criminal Code Amendment Hill has passed, after much delate in the Council. Mr. Kigg especially opposed the granting of the six months’ time limit for laying information, and thought three or four quite enough. Most unprejudiced persons w ill t* more inclined to agree with the LytUiton Ttmes, which is unable to see why offenders of this class should l>e Favoured Above Other Criminals in being given any time limit at all. We would fain hope, too, that the public resolutions lately passed in Christchurch by the Womens Institute, the Children’s Aid Society, and allied reformers generally, may have some effect in altering our shamefully inequitable illegitimacy laws. It is a standing disgrace to women electors that the House has not lieenyet forced to grant registration in the father’s name, publicity of the same and joint responsibility in cases of concealment and infanticide, together with far more stringent regulations as to the support of such children. Penalising the child has had its day. along with the equally logical and equally primitive expedient of putting a criminal's whole family to death with him. The Shop* and Offices Bill has left Committee in a very leaky and brokenmasted condition. It is, in it* present form, a backw aril movement altogether though it still seems to limit the hours of assistants to 52 hours per week. Hut it is hazy on early closing generally, which hardly matters, perhaps, as the two lists of exempted trades leave little to lie closed at all till 8 p.m. Up to 8, bakers, booksellers, chemists, butchers, ilonsts, hairdressers, tobacconists, and

dairy produce shops may all stay open on ordinary nights, while confectioners, pork butchers, fishmongers, fruiterers, may stay open till 10 p.m. On one night of the week, all stay open till 11 —a scandalous hour. Another clause, however, provides for the closing hour in every trade loin; fixed by a three-fifths majority in that trade. Mr Taylor sensthy remarks that Parliament is attempting the impossible in trying to regulate hours of labour; It Should Lay Down a Principle, and get the Arbitration Court to settle hours with each tra ie. The Maori Land Councils Hill has been read a second time; it extends the otherwise lapsed life of the Councils for one month, to give the House time to discuss Native lands. The Maori meml>ers show great dissatisfaction with the present land laws. The Llectoral Hill brought forward two interesting points, the general representation of Maoris on the ordinaly franchise, and the eligibility of women for Parliament. Both were negatived. We are not all qualified to say whether Maori interests are best served by special representation or not; but we all know what we lose, !>oth in Parliamentary dignity and in legislative reform by the exclusion of women from the House and Council. Few sessions have hern so stained by personalities as this; these feline amenities would tie impossible were even one woman present to enforce the ordinary decencies of life outside. Mr Taylor and the twenty-two men who voted for his amendment are plainly not afraid of daylight. For the rest, they know that women will enter Parliament first in the Capacity of a Broom ; and the dissenting majority does not, for the most part, feel in a safe relation to any broom. The Premier is to lie congratulated on his second attempt to wrestle with the abuses of capital, as embodied in his Trades and Monopolies Prevention Hill now lietore the country. Still more immediately promising, perhaps, is the Workmen's Homes Hill introduced by Government, and framed on the lines indicated in the Annual Labour Report, where the high rents of late years are dealt with. This Hill provides for the securing of land on which workmen’s homes might lie built on easy terms, no house to stand on more than one acre. The one deliatable point in the Hill is that it offers, liesides a lease of fifty years with chance of

renewal, three wavs of acquiring the freehold of these sections, one by net payment in twenty-five years, two others by monthly payments extending over thiityone and forty-two years respectively. Both tins and the Native grievances lead up to the one great question liefore the country —land. The Premier has placed certain proposals liefore the House to discuss. His friends are not satisfied with his tentative attitude; his enemies openly jeer at his apparent rail-sitting. The situation is critical. The Premier it seemingly knock kneed on the leasehold. Mr Massey would give the Crown tenants right of purchase at original valuation—a thing immoral and impossible. The New Party stand firm against selling an inch of Crown land. In the Land debate which has begun, the Premier has just nipped off one No-Confidence motion; the Op|>o-ition is hopefully lying in wait for another. The House is beginning to suspend its ordinary hours, so the end is in sight.—l.lf.