WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Hokitika Guardian, 3 February 1922, Page 2

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

END OF SESSION.

iN SIGHT:

Special Td GUARbui!)

'. , ti WELLINGTON, .Feb. 1, The Prime Minister expects to bring the session to a close before the middle of next week—not on Monday, he said, but perhaps on Tuesday, if members will content to remain silent and vote.

Just how he will manage to “ wind up,” even within the week, is not very obvious to people unfamaliar with the methods by which legislation is rushed through Parliament when a large majority of members have sot their hearts upon getting home at the earliest possible moment. There still are ten or a dozen Bills at various stages remaining on the Order Paper which were described at the opening of the session as of the first importance', and yet Mr Massey implies that the whole of these, as well as the two “Washing-up” Bills, •the Supplementary Estimates, and the

usual accumulation of odds and ends

can be put through in three or four sitting days if members will forego the privileuge of discussion and take the good faith and discretion of the Gov* eminent foi* granted. It is the old, old story, of course, told by the one Prime Minister after another, and there is little doubt that it will agaiit coine trtie.. EXTENSION OF PARLIAMENT. A rumour has beeii set in circulation by one of the local papers to the effect that the life of the present Pariiainent is to be extended for a year on the ground that it would not be desirable to hold a. general election till the country has emerged from the financial difficulties in which it is at present involved. Mr Holland, the leader of the Official Labour Party, mentioned the matter in the House on Monday, and asked for an assurance from the Government that nb such uneonstitutioiinal

proceeding would be attempted. Mr Massey’s reply, it is being noticed by the Minister’s critics, was not so definite as it might have been. The Cabinet. be said, had not given any such proposal a moment’s consideration. 1-le could not say what Cabinet would do before next session, but he did not) think Mr Holland need be Seriously 1 alarmed. Mr Massey spoke in a half ‘ humourous vein, which, it must be confessed, was not entirely appropriate to the occasion but so far can be gathered in the lobbies the rumour restH oil the very sleliderest foundation. The qualification Mr Massey attached to his reply, however, has set the gossips talkI iug. THE GOVERNMENT’S DILEMMA. It is not an unnatural assumption ! that the Government would be glad to * nut off the general election for a year.

; The postponement would give the soref ness created by its retrenchment ncees- • sities time to heal and the embarrassment occasioned by its land inflation a chance vo be forgotten. Referring to the second of its troubles the “Post” returns to its old role of land reformer. “It is somewhat pathetic,” it says, “to see grown-up Ministers of the Crown trying to explain to the House of Representatives that the Government’s land-purchase operations on a rising market have not assisted materially the rural inflation. It is true that the computation of land values, on the basis of abnormal prices of produce, gave the first fillip, but every time that the Government intervened to buy at these 1 false values, the Government gave the crazy structure another fillip, until farmers’ land values soared high above those Government valuations that the same farmers now say are wickedly high. To deny the Governments share in the inflation is therefore a very fatuous mental exercise not discoverable anywhere outside the debating atmosphere of the House of Representatives.” To this there seems to be no readv retort, unless it is that the Go-. vernment but followed the advice of its official experts. RETRENCHMENT. Now that the Public Expenditure Adjustment Ball is actually passed there seems to be less active resentment than was generally expected. Inevitably there was a much larger volume of protest in Wellington, where thousands of public servants congregate, than there was in any other centre, but even here many of the employees who joined in Mie denunciation of the Government while there was a possibility of averting the “cut” are admitting it is only fair and reasonable they should bear their share of the country’s burdens. There still is some soreness over the absence of a well ordered system of graduation, but even on this point feeling does not run nearly so high as it did a fortnight ago, and a little tact in the administration of the measure may save the Government from most of the dire calamities that were retrenchment would bring upon its head.