PARLIAMENTARY WISDOM

Hokitika Guardian, 29 August 1929, Page 8

PARLIAMENTARY WISDOM

(Otago Daily Times.) The general public will feel relieved that the Government is not disposed to take seriously the suggestion emanating from a Labour member, that it should establish a State news paper. The idea may 'appeal to i few members of Parliament to whon it seems a matter of considerable importance that reports of their speeches in extenso should be placed in the hands of the electors. It is highly probable that the electors themselve will take a different view. Probably the majority of them would be pleased if there were less recording of political speeches in the daily press -athor than more. If dissatisfied members are under the impression that what they say in Parliament is necessarily worth recording, even a State newspaper, it is to bo apprehended, would cause them pain and disappointment. The grievance might seem worse than ever, for even a State publication would have to condense and discriminate or .it would be in danger of foundering from thr very weight of the political verbiage in its columns.

Members of Parliament have their speeches reported in full, as it is, in Hansard. , Presumably they consider that an unsatisfactory method of bringing their utterances before the public, because Hansard appears /only at intervals, and speeclves are not circulated through it till, some day? after they have been delivered. There can, of course, be no arbitrary control over'the press reporting of parliamentary debates. The newspaper? onblish what they consider to- he ol importance and of interest to their readers. If they were to attempt to publish the proceedings of Parliament at much greater length than they do, this would entail the exclusion of news of a kind in which the public is considerably more interested. There is no reason to believe that the public yearns for' longer and more detailed reports of parliamentary debates. Tf it did there would be a popular demand for Hansard and all the collective wisdom embodied in its pages. As ; a matter of fact the number of subscribers to Hansard throughout . the country reaches the miserable total of 138. Once upon a time the suggestion was made that the public should be afforded the boon of a daily Hansard, giving forth each morning reports of the parliamentary speeches of the day before. But it had to the recognised that there would be little demand for such a record and little public appreciation of the value of so expensive a luxury. A publication of that kind would he subject,-.moreover, to the drawback that members could not ha-ve the opportunity of correcting their speeches, as they do for Hansard in present circumstances, prior to the immortalisation of them in print. Even against a .State newspaper, that chronicled their utterances at length they might find cause for resentment in the faithful reporting of the sort of thing that is likely to he. ignored by the ordinary newsoaner. Vanity is largely at the back of the dissatisfaction evinced by some members *ovc-r the amount of space allotted to their speeches in the daily press. The sympathy of the electors, however, will 1 not "be extended to them in this matter. To have to read some of the speeches that are made in Parliament is a trial only one degree worse than that of having to listen to them.