AN EVENTFUL SESSION

Hokitika Guardian, 20 April 1927, Page 2

AN EVENTFUL SESSION

SYDNEY. April r. The visit of the Duke and Duchess gave the (lovernment a chance, which it readily seized, to close a session which, among the large body of unattached electors at least, has not served to improve the prestige of the Lang regime, and which has left the Upper House as firmly entrenched as ever, despite the swamping of it with Labour supporters, and the Government's repeated threats to abolish it. In fact, at the end, and in the rush to put up tiie shutters, the Government was found eating out of the Legislative Council’s li.'tnds, If, at the next election, Mr Lang elects to make the abolition of the Upper House the big issue, lie is likely to be defeated, since, with the Government, it is a question, not of Legislative Council reform, but of abolition or nothing. Among the Government’s innocents ; which have been slaughtered, at least temporarily, are measures for which its supporters have been making an insistent demand, notably the drastic Railways Bill, which will virtually transfer the control of the State’s biggest enterprise from the Commissioners to the Cabinet, the Early Closing Bill, which, the small suburban shopkeepers contend, will mean ruin if they have to shut on up Friday nights, the l.arge Estates Bill, and the Government Savings Bank Bill, only through the operations of which the Labour party can hope to make its big bousing scheme effective, Fortunately the bitter relations, politically, between the Government and the Governor have not l>een allowed to east their shadow over tile Ducal visit, although it is not at all improbable that his Excellency has told the Duke all about it. especially as they have been living under the one roof. In fact, the Governor and tiie ministers have been fraternising in such a way at the Ducal festivities as to suggest undying*friendship. L j - j