LEGISLATORIAL OBSTRUCTION.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1586, 16 June 1887, Page 3

LEGISLATORIAL OBSTRUCTION.

However great may be the advantages, theoretically, accruing to the body politic from the existence of a second Chamber of Legislature, it is not to be denied that only too frequently our Upper House accepts, without demur, proposals which it might fairly demand further time to consider, and puts the brake on just when and where delay is positively mischievous. A very marked example of such illjudged obstruction is afforded by the treatment accorded by the Legislative Council to the Government Loans to Local Bodies Bill and the Local Bodies Loans Bill. In the first of these the Council cut out clauses intended to enable Drainage Boards and Municipal Councils to obtain loans at a low rate of interest for the construction of public works, the effect being not to prevent those bodies borrowing for such works, but merely to compel them to pay more for their money, and consequently to impose higher rates than would otherwise have been necessary. But a; new xlause added by the Council was even more mischievous, being radically wrong m principle, so much so that rather than accept it the House of Representatives unanimously agreed to lay the Bill aside. The clause referred to proposed that a property owner, if he could only prevail upon a Resident Magistrate 10 do so, might succeed m getting himself relieved from rating m respect of public works undertaken for the general benefit, upon showing that he was not specially benefited by such works. A more extraordinary proposal was never made, for once admit this sort of thing and what would there be to prevent people escaping from their share of liability m respect of municipal lighting or water supply, on the plea that they had their ! own wells or tanks or were users of 'candles cr kerosene instead of gas? The Local Bodies Loans Bill proposed inter alia, to amend the Act of last I year by repealing the stupid provision (inserted m the Council) requiring any proposal for a loan to be carried by an absolute majority of all possible votes, and to substitute therefor a threefifths majority of the votes . actually polled. The former provision is absolutely impracticable m some cases owing to the number of absentee votes, and is m all cases unfair because counting all unrecorded votes, whether of persons entirely indifferent or perhaps favorable to the proposal voted upon, as if votes actually recorded against it. The amendment of the law asked for was m both cases a highly desirable one,[and it is a great pity that the action Of the Council has prevented it at any rate for the present.