CASUAL COMMENTS

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19174, 3 December 1927, Page 13

CASUAL COMMENTS

POLITICS AND PARLIAMENT

(ipbciaixt wßrrrar job thb pbbbi.) [By Leo Fanning.] "But for the unquiet heart and brain, A nee in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise. Like dull narcotics numbing pain. The days have vanished, tone and tint, And yet, perhaps, the hoarding sense Gives out at times (he knows not whence) A little flash, a mystic hint." —Tennyson. Learned persons say that the word Parliament means, more or less, a par-ley-place, which the ordinary man may construe into palavery or talkery. But what is (or are) politics? The wellworn dictionary on the edge of the table is not up to date, as it gives only this definition: "Politics: The service of government; that part of ethics which relates to the regulation and government of a nation or state for the preservation of its safety, peace, and prosperity; political affairs, or the conduct and contests of political parties." As only the concluding clause applies to the politics of the average politician, it may be argued that his politics are anything but political—and, if they are not political, what aro they? He' may believe that they are the reflex of '"public opinion," which is the most illusive, elusive, and delusive thing imaginable. One of Gill>ert Chesterton's brightest sayings is: "Man makes God in his own image and likeness." So. too, with "public opinion." At this point the reader must be left in the fog where the commentator finds himself.

While this article is being written everybody (well, anybody with any sense) is happily anticipating a period of non-politics. It is now the time known as "the dying hours of the session." Twenty'minutes' walk away from this scurrying pen, Mr Speaker is probably rising in the midst of some member's mixed metaphors and saying: ''l am sorry to interrupt tho honourable gentleman. I shall call upon him after the supper adjournment." Ten o'clock will bring the jangling bell again for another rally of the weary, who are eager to be away. This is the time when most of tho members believe that brevity i< tho soul of charity. Tho tedious iterator is frowned upon and scowled upon, and may even get rude reminders of somebody's yearning to go home. Members who baulked and jibbed at little molehills in tho early days of the session now take giant strides over_ a mountain of business. Things which might have made a month of wrangling in July or August may now fly by in a night. It is the old pell-mell, the old helter-skelter.

Five months of it! During twentythree weeks the legislators have had the daily prayer at 2.30 for enlightenment and guidance by Providence, but they havo not all prayed as earnestly as they should havo done. Winter, spring, summer! Daffodils and oysters have gono out, and roses and cows havo come in—but tho members, ncvor quitting, still are sitting. The questions innumerable, the interjections and' retorts and the clanging of the division bell have gone on and on. Tho birds have built nests, and taught their young to fly, but the marble halls have still the sounds and echoes of enactments — but the end is due this week.

All sessions arc tho same session from some viewpoints. Tho Vocabulary does not vary much, and the general atmosphere- of the House is as unchanging as Mr Sidey's faith in the millennial influence of daylight saving, or Mr McCombs's love of vulgar fractions (and decimals), or Sir George Hunter's hope of an amended Gaming Act. Every session begins with d halt _in mazes of wordiness, and ends in quick legislative hops, steps, and jumps. Here arc some remarks that can apply to any session. # *• * Almost any big policy Bill keeps the messengers on the run during the second-reading clash. Volumes of Hansard and huge tomes of appendices to the Journals of the House roll in, till some of the warriors are obscured by the stacks of more or less serious literature. Ammunition from the magazines of tho past is always used in the political battles of the present, and each army is confident that it can wipe out the other with shells retrieved from dusty lockers. This is a favourite method of attack, but Hansard is a very dangerous petard. Many a hopeful grenadier has suffered a ludicrous hoisting. It is a wise politician who thinks thrice before he quotes Hansard once.

Swinburne wrote of Proserpine: "She waits for each and other, she waits for all men born." Well, Hansard is the politician's Proserpine. Sometimes ono may truly say of Hansard what the cynic said unkindly of marriage: "Those who are out wish they were in, and those who are in wish they were out." When ho is young the politician is intoxicated by the assumed flattery of verbatim space, and leaps giddily into the Hansard pit beforo he looks. He has painful awakenings, and he becomes wary. What would he give if he could rub out the wild words of indiscretion and impetuosity! If he had only had the least suspicion how his beliefs and interests might changol There is scarcely a politician of any standing in the House of Representatives who cannot be smitten by "that two-handed engine at the door," Hansard. It is the friend of every member and the foe, the joy, the sorrow, the hope, and the despair.

One minute the House may be as quiet as the little hall where an uplifter is lecturing—and in a moment it may look like the grandstand at a North-South football match because somebody is heckling- a Minister. Each member has his fellow-members graded. If Nerves has been to the library, while the House is sitting, and strolls back to the lobby, he asks a passer-by: "Who's up?" If the one on his feet is the platitudinous HeaHdacher or tho mumbling Blugwug, Nerves lights his pipe, and smokes, and muses, and looks for a chance to take somebody into Bellamy's or to be taken there by somebody, till Headacher or Blugwug has ceased from troubling, and the weary are beginning to wake up. All the members can be graded between the two extremes —A, who speaks quietly and briefly about once a fortnight, and Z, who speaks a fortnight in once, raucously, horribly.

Not the least of the methods taken to make Ministers earn their salaries is the "question in the House." Frequently the queries result in the production of useful information, and often the outcome is merely much trouble to no particular purpose. Some members are like the bower-bird. This amusing creature makes a parade, which it adorns with any glittering objoct that it can find, from a watch and chain to a piece of mirror, although it does wish to sec the time or look at itself in the glass. So some members have a mania for making ministers grope for queer assortments of facts. The receiver make* no appreciable use of the spoil; he dumps it aside, and dredges for more.

Inexperienced campaigners—"outsiders"—who hope to help Providence in a • proper guidance of members on a Bill usually begin with pamphlets or fiompous resolutions—"copies to be onrarded to members." They become

wiser when they learn that members are overwhelmed with printed matter of all sorts, and that circulars or leaflets usually get only a cursory perusal, at best. The shrewder pleaders resort to the personal interview, at which some are very persuasive. The champion lobbyist, whether a Parliamentarian or not, is he who has infinite patience and boundless cheerfulness and good sense for just the right amount of "fine work" at the right times and places. He needs a broad and deep knowledge of human nature, and long vision—and has to be prepared for some shocks.