PARLIAMENTARY ITEMS.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1799, 26 November 1879, Page 3

PARLIAMENTARY ITEMS.

WELLINGTON, November 25. Mr Macandrew’s attempt to censure the proposed finance of the Government was treated last night more in ridicule than in earnest. His newly found zeal for retrenchment sat so strangely on his face, and was so laughed at by the House that he found it necessary to make a joke of it himself before he sat down. Sir George Grey did not much improve the position of the Opposition, when ho showed his usual ignorance of everything connected with finance, and had no better remedy to propose, to meet our £951,000 deficiency, than to reduce the salary of the Governor, and stop the pay of the Legislative Council, or to take a little off the salaries of the officials, which, whilst in power, he proposed to increase, and, indeed, had increased without the sanction of the House. Mr Ballance was said to be unwell, and without him the Opposition have no man amongst them who can even pretend to talk finance. The attempts of Messrs Montgomery and Moss to read extracts from old speeches, and mix them with some mistaken calculations of their own, were most dreary to listen to, and their facts were dispersed like summer snow directly Major Atkinson condescended to notice them. Mr Stewart displayed a power to keep on his legs for hours together, and to utter enough half connected words to be called speaking against time, but at 3.30 a.m. he was obliged to sit down, and had an opportunity to join his few friends who had stayed to hear him in voting against the Government. Only enough of the Government supporters stayed to keep a House. This afternoon Sir George Grey again opposed going into Committee of Supply, and the whole afternoon was wasted in talking any kind of nonsense that his supporters could think of, including a most wild ultra-protec-tionist motion by Mr Moss, to exclude all foreign shipping from taking a cargo from one New Zealand port for any other port of New Zealand, It was twenty minutes to five before the House got into Committee. Mr Saunders gave notice this afternoon that in Committee on the Property Assessment Bill, he would move to exempt from taxation all agricultural implements, all horses kept for breeding purposes or slow draught only, all unbroken horses, all steam engines and machinery, whether fire or portable, grain, roots and stored crops. The Property Tax Bill will consist of only two or three clauses fixing the rate of taxation, and will be brought on when the House is moved into Committee of Ways and Means.