Parliamentary.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 20 July 1901, Page 3

Parliamentary.

(our parliamentary reporter).

Helping the Settlers Wellington This Day.

The report of the Superintendent of the Advances to Settlers Office for the year ending 31st March last was presented to Parliament yesterday. The instalments of interest and principal to the 31st March, 1900, have, he states, been collected in full, the department has no securities on its hands. Up to the 31st March, 1301, the Board bad authorised 9,931 advances, amounting to £8,224,900.

The .total amount asked for by the 9,931 applicants was £3,691,005. 1,280 applicants declined the grants offered them amounting to £565,880, so that the not advances authorised numbered 8,701, and amounted to £2,679,520. The securities for the net authorised advances were valued at £5,859.039, and these are in many instances being enhanced by the expenditure on improvements of part of the money borrowed, and the liability reduced by the periodical repayment of principal. In the case of instalment of loans the number of applications received to the 31st March, 1901, was 12,999 for an aggregate amount of £4,450,828. The manner in which instalments continue to be met by mortgagors is, says the superintendent, highly satisfactory and has in no small degree contributed to the result obtained on the year’s operations. The one per cent sinking fund is now in the hands of the Public Trustee and amounts to £70,839. The balance at credit of the account including interest to the 31st March amounts to £20,127 13s 7p. A Government “ Black Book.” Wellington, July 20.

It is a matter of common comment in the House that when a member, and more especially a supporter of the general policy of the Government, makes an attack on the administration, he is generally followed by a more thorough supporter of the Government, who seems wonderfully well posted up in the subject—more especially in regard to some previous speech of the attacking member.

Some light on the way in which this is done was thrown by Mr G. W. Russell yesterday; and, although Mr Russell is of an independent attitude, he has often brought upon him the Premier’s wrath. His statement is borne out by previous experience. The Ministers, he informed the House, keep a careful record of the speeches of members, and they are all kept in a “ black book.” When a member makes a speech in the House and his utterances are not acceptable, the “black book” appears on the Premier’s desk, and immediately afterwards it is -passed round so as to enable some member of the party to make a quotation from the speech of the member whom it is desired to castigate. An instance of this kind occurred the other evening when the member for Motueka had the “black book ’’ handed to him to enable him to reply to some remarks which he (Mr Russell) had just made. Inebriate Homes. In replying to the taunt frequently thrown out in the Council during the past couple of days that the Inebriates Home Bill is a dead letter, the Minister of Education stated that an institution was in process of re-construction for carrying out the purposes of the Act, and in all the large hospitals special facilities were to be given by the Government for providing such accommodation as might be required for chronic or violent cases. Action in these directions was being taken and he trusted that the Act would be in full operation very shortly. N A Conceited Member.

The member for Ashburton generally adopts the tone of sturdy independence in his speeches in the House, and yesterday he went even a little further than usual. He objected strongly to a clause in the Land for Settlement Bill, requiring Land Boards to give preference to married men in disposing of land, and declared that he was not going to be controlled or influenced to do anything he did not believe to be right. Ho would, he went on to inform the House, be returned to Parliament ar long as he liked to stand for Ashburton; and if the Premier struck him off the roll of membership of the Land Board, he would get carried through the Legislature a measure making Land Boards elective, and would stand and be elected for Canterbury in spite of Mr Seddop,