The Feilding Star. SATURDAY, AUGUST 31, 1889. Parliament

Feilding Star, Volume XI, Issue 33, 31 August 1889, Page 2

The Feilding Star. SATURDAY, AUGUST 31, 1889. Parliament

When the present session of Parliameut is ended the feeling which led the colony to imperatively demand a decrease in the number of members will be intensified. Taking the pre sent members as a whole they have been at no end of trouble to show that they are quite unfit to be entrusted with the control or management of the affairs of the colony. To say that we are governed by party is perfect non sense. Each member seems to be workiug for his own ends quite independently of his fellows. On looking at the position of persons — we do not say parties because they do not exist —in the House, what do we find ? A Premier, Sir Harry Atkinson, without a following, a leader of the Opposition, Mr Bai.lance, without a tail, and a " middle party," composed of "superior persons" who do nothing themselves nor allow the others to do anything. There niay be one or two exceptional members who, accurately guagiugthe position, wisely hold their tongues and bide their time, and who when that time comes will give a good account of themselves ; but in the meantime we are drifting al out like a chip in a horse pond, aimlessly and uselessly. If the Premier had not been so determined "to get to Chicago" by sticking to his seat on the Ministerial benches, we sincerely believe the colony would have been in a better position, and no matter who were in power, or rather, we should say, in receipt of Ministerial salaries, because members of the Cabinet, now-a-days, do not appear to have more authority than the traditional halfstarved ushers of a small private schoolj the colony could not be worse off than it now is. One of the unhappy causes of this state of affairs is the fact of members being ruled, governed, dominated and tyranised over by an epigram — " Keep the Ministry in and their measures out." This has been the watch-word of the brave, the excuse of the timid, and the refuge of the destitute, but it has also been a curse to the colony, and we have reason to believe that the unhappy author of it, Mr Scobie Mackenzie, has long repented its parentage in metaphorical sackcloth and ashes. Owing to the peculiar constitution of the House some of the best measures, comparatively, ever presented to a Neve Zealaud Parliament, have been either thrown out or thrust aside, without even the pretence of a legitimate debate, notably The Hospital and Charitable Aid Bill, The Amended Bankruptcy Act, the Law Libel Bill, Property Tax, and others which were of vital importance to every taxpayer in the colonj\ Not the slightest evideuce was ever given of members desiring to discuss these in a fair and mauly spirit. We have enly one hope, which is that at the next general election the people will remember those members who have wasted the time of the country in useless talk, or the utterance of flippant banalities, and should they offer them* selves again a- can lidates, reject them to a man.