As I Hear... Inside The House And Out

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31107, 9 July 1966, Page 12

As I Hear... Inside The House And Out

[By J.H.8.5.l CO far as the particular ° matter of the reduction of the cost of living is concerned, I see nothing in the Budget that may be regarded as having any particular significance from that point of view . . . And in reference to page 335 of the Budget as regards to the matter of the particular proposal there in regard to the proposed extension of rebates in respect of the transport of fertilisers in connexion with the reduction of the costs of production, so far as that matter is concerned, in my personal opinion it is my own view that . . . But Mr Speaker, Sir, in view of what has been previously said in this connexion, I believe that in this particular matter and so far as the worker is concerned, I feel sure concern should be expressed in this regard when I find that little attention has been paid to his interests in this respect or to his interests so far as he is concerned in connexion with this particular matter. . . . What, you are asking, is all this about? Truly, nothing whatever. Only a few evenings ago, I gave myself the unusual treat of listening to the broadcast of the Budget debate —in which, such was my good fortune, I heard two or three very good speeches—and towards the end heard something of which the form is pretty accurately reproduced above. I cannot tell a lie. It may be that, compressing for this illustrative purpose, I have exaggerated the frequency of its stock phrases; but the frequency was that of what somebody once called damnable iteration. As for the substance, I have preserved as little in the summary as there was in the original; but the responsibility for it is wholy mine. 4: # *

Q.OING on about Parliaments, I have read within a few days two reports of proceedings that gave me great pleasure. One was that of Mr Speaker’s measured

warning to members, during an angry Imprest Supply Bill debate, to guard against destroying the public reputation of the House, which he was jealous to preserve and which they should assist him to preserve; and my report says that the House heard him in a hush. It is to be hoped that that is significant; that Sir Ronald Algie’s warning told; and that members will mind their manners as the session advances to its close. But it is not easy to be hopeful. Much damage has already been done to the so-called “public image” of Parliament, and not a little of it quite recently: in the debate that occasioned Mr Speaker’s warning, in exchanges over the security business at Auckland University, in charges that the Opposition deliberately prolonged a debate in order to be able to attend the Wellington-Lions match at public expense, in charges that a member had been paid his Parliamentary salary to induce him to keep out of politics. And so forth. These are not episodes new in kind or perhaps in number. What strikes me, as it has struck me before, is that they are all episodes in which members sink themselves to charging each other with mean offences—with being petty cheats and so forth. I cannot tell whether they realise that they damage themselves as much as those they charge, under Parliamentary immunity. The harm is done. # » »

rpHE second report I refer x to above is that of Mr Gerard's contribution to the Budget debate, in which—as a member and a Minister about to retire—he set himself very levelly and sagely to describe the hard and honourable function of members of Parliament. This should be widely read and respectfully considered. But nothing pleased me more in Mr Gerard’s speech than his comment addressed to his friends in the Press Gallery, that Parliament was some-

times “not helped” by reports that—l paraphrase him roughly—paid less attention to “sensible remarks” than to forensic explosions and sensations. I am sure Mr Gerard is right; and I am sure old colleagues in journalism will agree that this is no new opinion of mine. The tendency, a very natural tendency, is to make a good story of outbreaks and outbursts in the House; and they ought—oh yes, they ought—to be reported. But the nuisance of it is that, since Parliamentary broadcasting came in, the press has, again very naturally, tended to rely upon it and to spare routine reporting accordingly. The result, the inevitable result, is that what Mr Gerard rightly calls “sensible remarks” figure less prominently in Parliamentary reports than reports of what used to be called “unsavoury episodes.’ It is another consequence, of course, that sober, matter-of-fact debates, free of sensational incident, tend to be described as dull or dreary. In fact they may be. But what is overlooked is that a great many debates, carefully and quietly reasoned over the technical issues, now so frequent, ought to be dull, ought not be lit by the flashes and fires of party and personal rancour. I shall add only that Mr Speaker’s warning and Mr Gerard’s remarks seem to tend to the same conclusion: that good manners in Parliament have a greater value than members always remember. And yes, this also: that Sir Ronald Algie and Mr Gerard have a special right to speak to this point; for I do not remember in the long political career of either, that he infringed his own principle. # * *

VVRITING about records on ’’ a recent occasion, I quoted Sir Gordon Richards’s total of 4870 wins in 21,834 starts and his remarkable succession of winning rides: the last race on October 3, 1933, all six the next day, and the first five on October 5. I was prompted to deplore the want

of a book of New Zealand records of the same kind. Two correspondents have come to my aid. One, from Marlborough, tells me that I’ll find much that I want in Allan Sutherland’s "N.Z. Famous Firsts,” a book to which others may be glad to be referred. The other, a Christchurch man who has a West Coast connexion that may have prompted his kindness, told me of a notable series of winning drives at a Reefton meeting and of an equally notable series of winning rides at Beaumont or Tuapeka. These references have been verified by the Racing Editor of “The Press,” showing that Watts drove seven consecutive winners at Reefton, February 8, 1954, three horses winning twice, without a favourite among the seven, and that Dooley rode all six gallops winners on the first day of the Beaumont Racing Club’s meeting, on April 4, 1931, and on the second day rode all six seconds. But Gordon Richards’s 4870 wins are far exceeded by those of the premier American rider, Longden, whom I saw photographed recently beside the editor of the N.Z. Turf Register. Longden’s tally, if I rightly remember, having lost track of the picture, exceeded 7000. That, of course, is nothing to compare with the American college campus champions’ joint record of eating 423 pancakes in half an hour. One champion, Miss Mary Graves, who arrived in Wellington a few days ago, did not say how the total was divided between her and her partner, contesting the championship among 150 colleges; but the reporter who interviewed her saw no signs of her having suffered from eating more than her share. One remembers,' of course, the competition to cram as many bodies as possible into a telephone box or into a motor-car, to engulf as many beers as possible within so many seconds, to sit so many hours on top of a p01e.... And how long it may take, as the American poet said, “patiently to push a peanut up Pike’s Peak.” We’re a dotty race.