POLITICAL.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2312, 3 October 1908, Page 3

POLITICAL.

THE ANNUAL SCRAMBLE.

The motion to go into Committee ot Supply on the Public Works Estimates was debated with a good deal oi vigor on both side® (says the ellington “Bost/but 7 attack and dc _ fence both necessarily followed very much the usual lines. The Leader or the Opposition, of course, set the ball rolling, and tho'ugh there was much ot his general programme with which we are unable to agree, wo find no reason t-o dissent from his general attitude of the administration ot tlie Public Works Fund, to the absence- ot any general Parliamentary control ot it, and to the manner m which it- is manipulated by Ministers to suit fbcir own political purposes. It is not tlieMinistry that is to blame so much as the system, or, to be quite accurate, the chief fault of the Ministry lies not in its maladministration ot a system -from which the best -political team in the country, could not extract satisfactory results, but in its retention of a system of which the fruits are so manifestly evil. Let any disinterested critic cast his eye down the maze of works and votes, big anil tittle, which constitutes the Public Works Estimate, and ask whether it is possible for any central intenegcnce, dependent for its very existence upon the support of the representatives ot a majority of tlie- districts benefited, to design and execute the allocation of the various votes in a business-hko .fashion, that will never lose sight of the common good. Such a icsul ■ sheer impossibility. lhe mine that seeks conscientiously to. gra.q merits of the greater part of these local votes shrink back, dazed and baffled from an inquiry to which no intellectual resources arc equal. The average member ot larli-ment fortunately docs not suffer/from .the effects of such mental strain as wc have suggested. He does not under stand -tlio greater part ot' wha ■ lie occs on the Public Works EstimMes. cis nob meant to understant it-, . , quite content to abide in invincible ig Says n( the “Christchurch iW’--The actions of a majority of the members of tho Legislative Council tins season resemble nothing so much the antics which tlio subjects ot * hypnotist arc sometimes made to petform for the amusement of ail audience. Tho feats of drinking kerosene, eating tallow candles, and so on, which these unfortunates go through at tho suggestion of the hypnotist are paralleled, m the case of the Council, by the alacrity with wV„Vh members swallow t-lic nauseous legislative mixtures offered them by the Attorney-General. So far lrom the Upper Chamber being a rest ran,j', f./.e upon hasty legislation, i recognised that at the word Of oommod it Jill 1““ "Sf /S er House. _