ANOTHER STEP FORWARD.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1818, 2 August 1913, Page 4

ANOTHER STEP FORWARD.

Tuf, Leader of the Upper House ia to bo congratulated on having advanced the Government's measure for the reform of the Legislative Council another stage. The Bill was read a second timo yesterday, but it was a second reading that still leaves unsettled the issue as to whether or not the present Council will lend its approval to the introduction of the elective principle. The only principle affirmed by the passage of the Bill through its second reading is the recognition by a majority of the Council that it is the duty of Councillors to consider whether the present Constitution of the Upper House should be altered, and if so as to the direction that chango should take. The Minister in Charge of

the Bill (the Hon. H. D. Bell) has had a most difficult and delicate task. He has had opposed to him in the Council a strong body of opinion entirely antagonistic to the elective principle as applied to the Upper House. These members wore hopelessly irreconcilable. He has been confronted with another section which has found cause for objection in the proposed methods of election and other details of the measure. He has been faced with signs of weakness and backsliding amongst those who last session supported the Bill; and the out-and-out friends of the proposed reform have been few in number. It hasbcen very clcarly demonstrated during the debate which has just closed that it is practically hopeless to expect to get the Bill in its present form through the Council as now constituted, and it has only been the tact and skill with which the situation has been handled by the Leader of the Council that has won for it the progress it has so far made.

The position now reached is by no means a satisfactory one from the point of view of those who favour the Elective Upper House idea. It is practically certain that whatever is the outcome of the decision to now refer the whole question of Legislative Council reform, as well as the Bill itself, to a Sclect Committee of members of the Council, the elective principle as embodied in the measure will not be endorsed by the majority of the present Councillors. Mr._ Bell, however, has attained his immediate purpose. He has succeeded in bringing the Council to recognise that it is "its duty to give its serious attention to the demand from the people generally—as expressed at the elections and through the votes of the people's representatives in the popular Chamber—for some measure of reform in the Constitution of the Upper House. Last year the Council refused to consider any measure of reform. They passed the Sccond Reading of the Bill, and then laid it aside for twelve months. This year they have made a step forward. They have passed the Second Reading, and have agreed to set up a Select Committee to consider the merits of the whole question.

It is only right that the members of the Council, who have been subjected in recent years to much adverse criticism, should be accorded the credit which is their due, for the earnest manner in which the majority of their number have on the present occasion approached this most important question. There is an clement in the Upper Chamber hostile to the Bill, whose hostility was only to be expccted. The views of these honourable gentlemen carry little weight inside or outside the walls of Parliament. But it cannot be ignored that there are also Councillors opposed to the Bill who have plainly approached the question from a high and disinterested standpoint, and their contributions to the debate just closed were amongst the most useful and most illuminating of the many able speeches delivered. It has not been our good fortune to find very frequent occasion for complimenting the Legislative Council on its standard of debate, and it is especially gratifying to be able to do so in connection with a question of such great importance as that now under review. With many of the objections raised to the Bill and the reasons therefor we are not in agreement; but, save in one or two instances, the debate was conducted on so high a level and in such an admirable spirit that had not the weaknesses of the present nomination system been so plainly manifested in recent, years, one might feel almost inclined to spare the system for another trial.