Evening Post. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1930. POWERS OF THE COUNCIL

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 72, 22 September 1930, Page 8

Evening Post. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1930. POWERS OF THE COUNCIL

The Unemployment Bill will be in the limelight again, and so will | the Legislative Council, when the Bill comes up for its second reading in that Chamber to-morrow. In the ! House of/Representatives the slow and at times stormy passage of the Bill illustrated the chances of the ihree-party system, one of the most fiercely contested clauses being carried by the Government with the help of the Labour Party, and another with that of the Opposition. In the Legislative Council the party whip counts for very little, and the confusion of triangularity not at all. But there is ample room for wide differences of opinion in a measure which embodies some excellent principles, but in practice will take its colour from the manner in which the immense powers entrusted to the administration are exercised. For good or for evil the scheme will be just what it is made by the board appointed to administer it, and it is the sustenance provisions that will supply the crucial test. It is accordingly against these provisions that the weight of the attack in the Legislative Council is likely to be directed. It might be argued that the energies of the Council would be more profitably employed in devising safeguards for the independence and the efficiency of the administration than in a frontal attack on the whole measure. But if the Unemployment Bill igj as we stated on Friday, a money Bill, the outcome of these efforts could at the best be a suggestion which, especially at this late hour of the session, would be doomed to futility.

A week ago, when there were rumours of the drastic amendments that members of the Labour Bills Committee of the Legislative Council were contemplating, there seemed to be a chance mat, to the excitement of a hard fight and a close division over the Bill as a whole, there might be added the joys of a constitutional battle-royal between the two Houses over the right of the Council to amend it. The expectation to which we referred on Friday that, if the second leading is carried,

the Committee stages will also be prolonged, as the opponents of the Bill are said to be determined to defeat it if at all possible,

suggests, however, that the issue may yet be raised., For how could a.prolonged struggle be maintained in Committee except by moving amendments? And how could the carrying of amendments to what on the face of it is a money Bill fail to provoke a conflict between the two Houses over a constitutional issue of the first magnitude? The stale and sultry atmosphere of our politics would be enlivened by a breath of fresh air if such a controversy could be provoked, but the doldrums are likely to continue. If there is ever to be a head-on collision between the two Chambers, the discretion of the Legislative Council may be relied upon to select some more hopeful issue than this.

It must be admitted that the Legislative Council of New Zealand was not always a model of constitutional discretion. It started out in 1854 to assert greater power than the House of Lords bad claimed for centuries by amending the first Appropriation Bill, introduced after the coming into force of our Constitution Act of 1852, but a reference to the Imperial Government brought an adverse ruling from the Secretary of State.

In this country, he wrote on the 25th March, 1855, it.has been the undisputed practice, as affirmed by the resolution of the House of Commons of the year 1678, that Bills of Supply ought not to be changed or altered by the House of Lords. It is quite true that the New Zealand Constitution Act contains no 'provisions to the same effect, but it appears to me that the analogy of the English Constitution ought to prevail, the reason being the same when the Upper House is not elected by the people; and in Canada, where the Constitutional Act is similar in this respect to that of New Zealand, the Lower Assembly has hitherto, exercised without dispute the came privilege in regard to money votes as the British House of Commons.

The resolution of the 3rd July, 1678, of which first England, then Britain, then Canada, and finally all the other self-governing parts of the Empire got the benefit, is of such supreme consiitutional importance, as well illustrates the continuity of English history, and is at the same time so refreshing in its earnestness, its emphasis, and even its tautology, that it is worth quoting:

All aids and supplies, and aids to His Majesty in Parliament, are the sole gift of the Commons; and all Bills for the granting of any such aids and supplies ought to begin with the Commons, and that it is the undoubted and sole right of the Commons to direct, limit, and appoint in such Bills, the Ends, Purposes, Considerations, Conditions, Limitations, and Qualifications of such Grants; which ought not to bo changed or altered by the House of Lords.

Though published less than fifty years ago the small volume from which our quotations are taken is it-

self of great historic interest, and it is given a pathetic interest also by the loss which the country sustained two months ago. In 1886 George Didsbury, Government Printer, issued a pamphlet of about 120 pages written by the Premier of the Day, and entitled:—

Memorandum regarding the Powers of the Legislative Council and the House of Representatives in New Zealand. By the Hon. Sir Robert Stout, X.C.M.6.

The labours of Sir Robert's Premiership had not prevented his writing a Memorandum of 21 pages in which the conflicts of the two Chambers are reviewed from the beginning, and a series of Appendices carries the analogous struggle in England more than four centuries earlier than the resolution we have quoted to the days of Magna Charta. If the Memorandum stood alone its interest would be confined almost entirely to the people of this country or the students of its history, but its 100 pages of Appendices seem to supply such a conspectus of authorities, ancient and modern, as must give it a permanent, value if it were made accessible.

The occasion of the Memorandum was the raising in that year of two important questions regarding the power of the Legislative Council:—

(1.) In dealing with the rates, could the Legislative Council alter, for example, the limit of the rate proposed to be authorised to be levied by Municipal Councils?

(2.) Could the Legislative Council interfere with the rates that were to bo levied by Harbour Boards on vessels? A special aspect of No. 1 was that the Council had interfered not to impose but to remit a tax. In this case the Council backed down, and] on the other there was a compromise. It seems that, since these differences had been disposed of, the decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council had come to hand deciding against the claim of the Queensland Legislative Council to amend a money Bill, and this supplied Sir Robert Stout with his starting point. In his summing up, he says:—

It -will bo seen from what has taken place between the Legislative Council and the House of Representatives that tho differences that have arisen parallel almost the history of the two Houses in England regarding Supply Bills.

We are chips of the old block, and have settled our phases of the old quarrels in the old way. But there is at once so much freshness and so much history in Sir' Robert Stout's 1886 Memorandum that it is well worth reprinting.