WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Hokitika Guardian, 30 August 1922, Page 1

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

STILL HOLDS THE FLOOR. ANOTHER. WEEK EXPECTED. SPECIAL TO GUARDIAN. WELLINGTON, Aug. 28 The debate on the Budget ran over the week-end, as everyone expected it would, and probably will occupy the House for another week at least. The speeches generally have not been of a high order, member after member addressing himself to the constituencies and saying very little that was either new or interesting in regard to finance. Members on the Opposition side of the Chamber have demanded some tangible evidence of the economies the Minister of Finance claims to have effected and members on the Government side have retorted hv asking these critics what more they would have done had they been in Mr Massey’s position. The truth of the matter is that there are not half-a-dozen members in the House who have mastered even the rudimentary details of the public accounts. Mr Massey has acquired a certain measure of facility in discussing finance and is sensible enough to rely upon the beads of Departments for bis facts, but Sir Joseph Ward and the Hon Arthur .Myers in this respect have been sadly missed from the present Parliament and there is no one on either side of the House who seems at all likely to take their places.

A CASE IN POINT. The profound ignorance of the public accounts which pervades practically tile whole of the House was illustrated in an astounding fashion on Thursday night when the Hon W. Noswortliy. the Minister of Agriculture, stated that in 1912 Sir Joseph Ward, who was then Minister of. Finance, had wound up the year with a deficit of £907,000 and that in the succeeding year Sir James Allen, who in the interval had supplanted Sir Joseph Ward at the Treasury, had a surplus of £709,000. That a Minister of the Crown should have made such an egregious blunderns this was astonishing enough, hut that not a single member on either side of the. House should have offered a syllable of dissent was still more astonishing. There cannot he many grown men outside Parliament who do not know that neither Mr Seddon nor Sir Joseph Ward during the time he was in charge of the Treasury was faced by. a deficit, hut apparently there was no one in the House on Thursday night, on the Opposition side at any rate, who knew Mr Noswortliy had blundered. It was not until the conclusion of the sitting, instigated, no doubt, by one of his colleagues, that the Minister explained he had made a mistake. In 1912. he said, Sir Joseph Ward had a surplus of £513,000. ELECTORAL ROLLS.

One of the funny incidents during Friday’s sitting of the House was n complaint by Mr W. T. Jennings, the very alert member for Waitomo, . that his name had been struck off the electoral roll for his own district. 'Mr Jennings was protesting against the wholesale and careless romovel of names from the rolls and quoted his own ease as a very horrid example. “I wns in New Plymouth last Monday.” he said, “and 'I found my name had been struck off. T was told at the Post Office that the officers did not know nnyone of the mime of W. T. Jennings.” Of course there was the obvious comment from one of the humourists of the House, "Such is fame,” but, judging from what Mr Jennings went on to say, the errors of some of the electoral officers are no , jesting matter. In the Waitomo dis--1 trict alone no fewer than 3.500 names had been struck off the roll, including those of farmers who had resided in the district for twenty years and voted iat the last three elections. The Prime j 'finißter was impressed and promised • to have the closest innnirv made, j CONTESTING EVERY SEAT. ! A report is being put about to the ! effect that the Reformers intend to j contest every sent at the approaching j general election, and it is understood to be based on a determination of tlieir I party organisation. Tf this really _is ] the ease there will lie many minority I representatives returned to the House i next "December, but this, of course, will be the fault of the Liberals and the Social-Democrats and not of the supporters of the Government. At the election of 1910 none of the parties contested every seat and where a Lib- ; oral or Reform candidate was opposing a Labour candidate the supporters of the older party not directly represented in the fight, with very rare exceptions, threw in their lot with Labour, j Mr Sullivan, tho very capable Labour I member for Avon, clearly owes bis seat !to the Reform voters in his constituency and it will he interesting to see what happens when he goes to the poll without their assistance. The Hon G. W. Russell, the gentleman Mr Sullivan ousted, is again to he the Liberal candidate.