DAYLIGHT SAVING.

Evening Star, Issue 19662, 15 September 1927, Page 6

DAYLIGHT SAVING.

ItorHi'ui. prospects which Mr Sidey could perceive for his Daylight Saving Bill before its latest running of the gauntlet should be substantially more hopeful now that it has passed tho committee stage in the House. It is not usual for “ stonewallcrs ” to extend their extreme tactics against a, Bill to the third reading stage. The sense of something “not sporting” in such obstinate resistance to tho majority’s will is usually sufficient of a dotorrent. Still tho renewed resistance can bo made, and in some circumstances might bo made successfully. Tin forms of tho House may need amending if Mr Sidey’s Bill is not allowed lu pass. It is an emphatic majority in (he people’s chamber which has been shown for it, and tho methods of opposilien which have been used up to this stage by the minority only bring representative institutions into disrepute. There was a. minimum of reason shown in last night's stonewall, and tho only wil scorns to have been that ol Sir Maui Pomarc, who said that only two men had interfered with tho sun .successfully—his own ancestor, .Maui, and an ancestor of Mr Samuel (the member Im Ohinemuri), Joshua. Tho first Mam was aided in his beneficent feat by the jawbone of his ancestress, but it that talisman has descended to Sir Maui Pomarc ho uses it to a worse purpose when he resists this Bill. Tho reports from railway officers which tho Prime Minister road seemed to show very little real opposition to the measure, even on tho part of farmers, except north of Auckland and in the Waikato. Tho railway difficulties, it would appear, have beep very much exaggerated. Tho true position seems io be expressed in Mr Sidey’s statement that “ tho period of operation of summer time was one in which there was so much daylight that, even if there was one hour less between dawn and the train, there would still bo ample daylight to meet the ordinary requirements of tho dairying industry in every district.” In other words, tho farmer, when official summer time begins, will not at tho worst have any more to suffer than he has a month before, when tho dawn is an hour later. Eighteen and a-half hours were spent in agrm ing to the short title of the Bill, but it was passed finally through committee without even tho amendment, reducing from four months to three and a-half its period of trial, to which Mr Sidey had signified his willingness to agree. That faith shown by tho majority in the Bill should bo the final influence in convincing tho minority of tho unreasonableness of its obstruction, making tho third reading no more than a formality. A majority for it is expected in tho Upper House. When the principle has become law, and tho practice of it is accepted, us it has been in Britain, as a general benefit; even farmers probably will wonder what all the fuss over it was about.