Federal Parliament.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 11 May 1901, Page 3

Federal Parliament.

The Governor-General's Speech adversely Criticised.

(by electric telegraph—copyright)

[Per Press Association.]

* Received this day at 10 5 a.m. Sydney, This Day. The Telegraph says uncertainly is the dominant note of the Governor-General’s speech. It includes all popular measures possible to pass within the next ten years, and expressed academic approval of a lot of pledges. With a nominal majority in the House, which the detection ot half a dozen members would dissipate, and an apparent minority in the Senate they obviously are afraid to take that definite attitude which the responsibility of the position demands. The ostentatious cold shouldering of Braddon is a blot. The other most prominent feature is that on all important fiscal questions the Government shows quite a painful palpatation with political nervousness. The references to the tariff consists of half platitude, half fallacy, the whole forming insterd of a policy, a feeble apology for want of one. If the Address-in-Reply is adopted without a more definite understanding upon the matter, there is not a guarantee that the tariff question will not be shirked.

The Herald says the Cabinet has not committed itself: in regard to the fiscal question on which a division of party in the new Parliament will undoubtedly turn. The Governor-General has been led into the presence of the same mysterious rctiscnce which Ministers have cultivated hitherto. The deliverance might' cither be an except fiom « Alice is Wonderland,” or a way leading up to some specially bold striking pronouncement or fical policy, but until the tariff itself supplies the item, the day of utterance will remain an uncertain one.