THE FINANCIAL DEBATE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1231, 13 September 1911, Page 4

THE FINANCIAL DEBATE.

The opening of the Financial Do-1 bate last evening was tame and disappointing. The Leader of the Opposition attempted to compress far too much into the hour allowed him under tho Standing Orders, and the Minister for Internal Affairs, who followed, was quite out of his depth in attempting to deal with financial questions, and during a great part of his speech was openly laughed at by his own party as well as by Ins opponents. Mr,. Masseys speech probably will read better than it sounded, but he would do very much better if he confined himself on such occasions to dealing with a few broad issues instead of attempting to handle a mass of details which might very well be left to the rank and fii of his party. Neither of the speakers last evening made any new points of very much importance, and it may be possible that tho Opposition proposes to reserve itself until the Government brings down its new proposals in definite form. A good deal of comment was heard at the action of the Government in putting up Mr. Buddo to reply to Mr. Massey. It certainly was a tactical blunder as exposing the weakness of the debating strength of the Ministry at tho present time. The followers of the Government must have spent a very unpleasant hour as Mr. Buddo floundered through the figures supplied to him by the Minister for Finance and generally showed how little he knew of the questions on which he had been instructed to reply to the criticism of the Leader of the Opposition.