WELLINGTON NOTES.

Hokitika Guardian, 27 February 1920, Page 4

WELLINGTON NOTES.

(Our * Special Correspondent)

THE CABINET. APPOINTMENTS STILL UNMADE. WELLINGTON, Feb. 25. Mr Massey, who is leaving for Auckland to-niglit to be entertained there by some of his personal and political friends, still is unable to give any information in regard to the reinforcement of the Cabinet. The delay in making an announcement on the subject is provoking a good deal of comment, and doubtless taxing the patience of the various aspirants for office, but it must be admitted the Prime Minister is keeping the administrative machine running surprisingly well with his much reduced team of colleagues. The arrangement inevitably places a large amount of additional work_and responsibility upon, the shoulders of 'the permanent heads of departments, hut happily the civil service system, with all its defects, seems j to provide reliable and capable men at | the top of the tree. Were it otherwise Mr Massey would have found very grave difficulty in carrying on under the enormous burden he has taken upon himself.

MORE SPECULATIONS. If the Prime Minister has made up his mind as to the personnel of his reinforced Cabinet he has kept his decision very closely to himself. The matter was mentioned at the recent caucus of the Reform Party, but was not discussed, in any detail and Mr Massey was left with an entirely free hand. At the time it was thought he might have it in his mind to approach certain members of the Liberal Party and certain unofficial Labourites with a view to their inclusion in the Ministry, but now anjthing of this sort seems highly improbable. The scheme would be as impracticable from the Liberal and Labour points of view as it would be from the Reform point of view. However desirous the Reformers may have been for a combination of the “best brains, irrespective of party, before the election, they see now that no such compromise can be effected.

THE HOUSING PROBLEM

Home seekers in Wellington are no longer complaining of the rents they are asked to pay. Their more pressing trouble is that they cannot rent houses at any figure. House owners who do not require the accommodation for themselves all are sellers and appear to have no difficulty in commanding boom prices for their properties. In these circumstances anxious inquiries are being made about the Government’s housing scheme, and yesterday Mr Massey gave some information concerning the progress it had made. The figui’es are not very impressive. The applications received from local bodies under the legislation of last session amounted to £405,000, but the heaviest of them were from the big centres, the Christchurch City Council, for instance, asking for £200,000. Applications of that magnitude had to be “turned down,” but | eleven applications, varying from £4OO | to £IO,OOO and amounting to £75,000

altogether, have been entertained, and these, it is understood, represent the class of business to which the scheme will be confined. SECTARIANISM IN POLITICS.

Sir Joseph Ward’s speech at Winton yesterday is fully reported in the local papers, and though it discloses nothing new concerning the tactics of the P.P.A. during the election campaign, it has evoked renewed expressions of regret that sectarianism should have been introduced into the politics of tile country, particularly at a time when a united effort is required from the whole community in the work of reconstruction. There are many people here, however, who refuse to believe that the activities of the P.P.A. were an important factor in the polling outside Sir Joseph’s own constituency. They attribute the defeat of the Liberal Party to the dissensions among the progressive forces

and to the failure of Sir Joseph and his colleagues to make it clear that while they denounced the extremists as wholeheartedly as their opponents did they sympathistd with the aspirants of moderate Labour.