The Dominion. MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1907. STEAM ROLLER LEGISLATION.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 58, 2 December 1907, Page 6

The Dominion. MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1907. STEAM ROLLER LEGISLATION.

_ Ode readers will have observed tliat, like all tlie other papers in tlie Dominion, which we have examined on the point, we haye refrained from publishing information respecting the dividends on horse races since the passage of the Gaming Act. The clause of the Act under which a' penalty is provided for such publication is a curious one. As it passed the House it prohibited the publication of "any statement as to the dividends," etc. During the discussion in the Legislative Council a member pointed out that a newspaper might "evade" the clause by publishing the amount invested on eaeh horse, leaving the public the simple task of working out the dividends for themselves. The Bill was re-committed 011 the Attorney-General's motion, aiid a sub-section was added to meet the possibility of such an evasion. This subsection extended the prohibitory effect of the clause to statements from which the amount of a dividend might be calculated. It is clear, therefore, that the intention of the House os understood by the .Council —which interpolated

what was felt to be a provision necessary to secure that that intention would bo carried the publication of the actual amount of such a dividend. The general lines of the Act, and the discussion in Parliament, showed that such really was the intention of the Legislature. Did the Legislature intend, however, or did the objects of the Bill require, that a newspaper should be prohibited from publishing such a statement as that "an' enormous dividend was paid" in the case of such an interesting and unusual occurrence as the return of a dividend of, say, £200? Assuredly such an intention and such a requirement were both wanting, and it is possible that a newspaper, prosecuted for publishing such a statement for its "news interest," might successfully quote the circumstances of the Legislative Council's amendment as so much absolute evidence, as distinct from mere presumption, as to the intention of the Legislature. The fact of the matter is that the House, and the Council as well, desired only to prohibit the publication of explicit information respecting the amount of a dividend, and clid it so clumsily as to prohibit many things which were not intended to be prohibited, and which would not be hostile to any principle of the Act. It is not in protest against the publication of occasional interesting items of news that we have referred to the matter. Our purpose is to emphasise the carelessness of the Government in devising its attacks upon this, that and the other thing. We repeatedly pointed out, while the new Land Acts were before Parliament, the readiness of the Government to mow down everything in the vicinity of whatever flower or weed was to be destroyed. Instead of constructing its legislation to kill its victim and leave other folk unharmed, it ran a steam . roller over the just and the unjust alike. Thus the provision that "no sale of land shall be effective so as to exempt the seller from liability in respect of graduated land-tax" unless a considerable percentage of the purchase money is "cash down" will prevent one class of "evasion" of the tax; but it will also hit severely the small settler who may wish to take lip land, but- who can only pay a small deposit. We wondered then "at "the ■ clumsiness that cannot check one class's 'evasion' of a liability except by imposing a quite arbitrary restriction upon another class's freedom of purchase." The Government has continued to feed our wonder. For, discussing the same Bill a fortnight later, the Attorney-General put forward, as a reason for denying to landowners the right of appeal to the Supreme Court, the fact that a Commissioner "untrammelled .by existing rules" might call evasion what a Judge would declare not to be evasion. Very convenient and easy, of course; but is it creditable to the Government _to shirk the labour of effecting legitimately, through well - considered means, what can be achieved more simply by a clause that clashes with every principle of justice? A day or two after this speech, the AttorneyGeneral supplied some further evidence of the Government's willingness "to mingle good and bad in a common ruin. 'We refer to his revelation respecting the hopeless, viciousness of the 1906 Land Bill. We repeat, what we said at the time., that this carelessness in framing legislation is what distinguishes the doctrinaire from the statesman. The only parallel to the Government's method is the method of those Chinamen in Lamb's essay who burned down their houses when they desired to roast their pigs. A. high-salaried official has recently been appointed to draft the laws, but one. would not suppose so from the shape of some of the legislation.