WELLINGTON TOPICS

Hokitika Guardian, 6 May 1931, Page 7

WELLINGTON TOPICS

PARTY FUSION. SIR, JAMES PARR DISAPPROVES. (Special Correspondent). WELLINGTON., May 4. Sir Janies Parr, who returned from England the other day, after serving nearly four years as High Commissioner in London and a further year in enlarging his acquaintance with the Mother Country and the Continent, lia.s returned to us with a wealth of information and an unabated store of activity. It has taken him less than a week to satisfy himself that the “Party Fusion” suggested by the Prime Minister would lie a bad thing for the Reform Party and for the country at large and that its certain fruit would be the appearance of the Labour Party in power. “I have returned from Europe,” he told the gathering of friends who greeted him in Auckland on Saturday, “with the profound conviction that it is vitally necessary to the jnolitical health and safety of the modern State to have a strong Conservative Party.” Just how the Labour Party would be helped into office by the fusion of the United Party and the Reform Party Sir James Parr does not explain. THIS PROBLEM. Probably Sir Jaliies lias not yet fully understood the nature and purport 01 the Prime Minister’s suggestion or fusion. Apparently he has it in his mind that Mr Forbes is seeking to absorb tbe Reform Party and finally to extinguish it. Nothing is further from the Prime Minister's mind. Nor, it would seem, does Sir James himself really think such a step is contemplated. “Ts it to New Zealand’s interests,” lie asked his hosts on Saturday, “to blot out the Reform Party? If it has to he wi]iod out .1. for one would lie very sorry. Might not the deni red end he equally well served by a temporary short partnership to frame the necessary measures in Parliament? Ought not Parliament to face the electors in due course in November when the people themselves may solve the problem.” These, of course, are questions the House of Representatives itself must solve, and if its members can maintain through an election campaign the harmony that is expected from them during the approaching session then the millennium is, indeed, at hand. TASKS AHEAD. The Prime Minister, in this morning’,- paper, counters Sir James Parr’s dream of a Conservative Party, standing for “sane and orderly progress, for law and loyalty, for the moulding of the existing economic system, and fop the benefit of the underdog,” with a frank statement of what can be done and what must be done in the interests of the community as a whole. lit the Hear future Mr Pork's will make Several impm'ant announce merits eon* eernjtig the rehabilitation of the Hiuvkos Bay earthquake area, railway control, local body rating and cents, education expenditure and the wheat and flour duties. These are tangible problems towards the amelioration of the conditions of the Dominion of far more immediate consequence than arc the dreams of Sir James of a Conservative Party that is to arise by and by to alleviate the condition of the underdog. Sane and orderly progress are of first consequence, but they are not the only needs of the country in the present crisis.