The Dominion. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1912. A MUCH NEEDED REFORM.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1561, 3 October 1912, Page 6

The Dominion. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1912. A MUCH NEEDED REFORM.

Not by any means Ac smallest lcform to which Parliament should address'itself is that which Dn. Newman commended to Mr. Massey yesterday. This is a reform of , the Standing Orders of the House. Dn. Newman is an old Parliamentarian, and he has had the advantage of spending a, few years in \vatching_ from outside- the annual accumulation of proofs of the'absurdities and anomalies of Parliamentary nroco(lure. But not even his useful possession of both the "inside" and "outside" standpoints is necessary to an appreciation of the foolishness of many of the rules by which Parliament governs itself. Behind the Standing Orders there arc sound and excellent principles, upon which most public and many quasi-public and private bodies base their proce : duve, and to. which application if. made by such bodies fur the settle.

ment of doubtful points. Yot the Standing Orders arc full of capricious, arbitrary, itfnd hampering conventions ; and hardly anybody has attempted seriously to indict them as absurd, or, as they often are, even injurious to the national interest. Let us glance at a few of tho things which the Standing Orders permit, or at least do not forbid, but which on every ground should be forbidden. If we repeat ourselves—this reform has often been advocated by The Dominion-—we need not apolo'gise, for you cannot become superfluous, in attacking an injurious absurdity, until it has been removed. Let us add also, in the preface, that many of the removable anomalies got into the Standing Orders as rough-and-ready ways of meeting temporary cases, which either cannot now recur.or can be met by some more sensible means; and that their badness in practice is often due less to the Standing Orders themselves than to the slack methods of their administration.

To begin with, there is not the smallest reason why "the formal business," as most newspapers call it— the solemn notices of questions, notices of motion, notices of Bills, presentation of petitions and papers, and so on—should occupy any of the House's time. There is no* reason why all the petitions and papers and notices should not be dropped into the Clerk's basket by members as they come in. Thus the House would have a full afternoon always for business. Such an arrangement, some members would immediately rise up to tell us, would deprive the House of its opportunity to engage in useiul discussions. .It would certainly prevent the Government of the day, or the Opposition of the day, or even a little group of interested members of any or both parties, from "talking out" and in some cases killing Bills or motions. But would that be a bad thing? It would be ,a very good thing to save the afternoon from dissipation on formal business, and to ensure that once a motion of any kind came up it would not be suddenly reduced to nothingness by the striking of a clock/as is at present the case. Anything worth discussion would in due course come on for discussion; and no motion once moved would, under a rational set of Standing Orders, be shelved without an'express order by the House. To do Mn. Massey justice, he has given tho private member a square enough deal: once on a time no private member, excepting Sir William Steward, ever had, much chance of keeping his Bill clear of the guillotine. The Standing Orders remain, however, an effective and elaborate device for suppressing the private member which any Government that cares to may use; and it is high time that the private member was granted tho right to take his "knock-out" blow in any matter from the House itself by a vote. To give him this right would involve the reconstruction of quite half the body of the Standing.Orders, but it need not involve any interference with the power of the Executive to direct the legitimate course of public business in Parliament.

'_ Not only can the business of Parliament be made infinitely simpler arid more logical than, it is, and the private member allowed more security than he can count on at present, but, the procedure of the House can easily be made more worthy of public approval than it has been of late. During the years 1910 and 1911, and especially in 1911, we many times called attention to the abuse of the 'personal explanation." With regret we say it here (for we do not wish here to blame any party, but only Parliament itself), Sir Joseph Ward has been the prime offender in this respect. The late Mil. Seddo.v whatever faults he had, was a fine Leader of the House. He infected the Speaker, .and it was very rare indeed that it happened (if it ever did happen) that while Mr. Seddox was in charge a member could, under the guise of a "personal explanation," simply continue the general argument. Under Sir Joseph Ward's leadership, the "personal explanation" became an abuse and a scandal. The Standing Orders should be amended to provide (as Sir Arthur GuiNNEss's permissions suggest they do not provide) that no "personal explanation" can be permitted until the end of debate and just prior to the division on the motion. Lately we have had a striking illustration of the_ necessity for amending the Standing Orders on "privilege." Until within the last two or three years nothing was more rare, nothing more grave, and even, in a sense, sensational, than a motion that somebody had committed* a "breach of privilege.." Apparently, the Standing Orders permit a member _to invoke the grave machinery, devised for the safeguarding of the privileges of Parliament, whenever a newspaper castigates him. It has even come to this, that the member for Awarua can move that a newspaper article is a "breach of privilege," and, a'fter hours,of irrelevant debate, admit that he merely moved the motion of "privilege" in order to continue a closed debate at which it did not suit his convenience to be present. The Speaker may be to blame here to some extent, but Sir Arthur Guinness may have been reduced to impotence by his reading of the Standing Orders. To deal fully with the defects of the rules.of Parliamentary procedure would lead us into technicalities that would not be easily understood by the general public. But the public sees Parliament as a very strangely managed and very capriciously ordered body— wasting time, wasting money, defeating private members by' agesanctified tricks and conventions, talking violently without reaching any conclusion. Mr. Massey seemed to invite, in his reply to Dr. Newman, helpful suggestions from any quarter. Our own suggestion is that a large committee of the House should be set up to receive, and consider next session, every suggestion members may make between now and then. The member for Wellington East ought to keep pegging away for his reform, which should result in very material gains to Parliament and to the public interest.