WELLINGTON TOPICS

Hokitika Guardian, 21 September 1931, Page 3

WELLINGTON TOPICS

INTER-PARTY COMMITTEE. . REPORT DELAYED. ' (Special Correspondent). WELLINGTON, September 17. The local daily papers, in deference to the request of the Prinip Minister, have scrupulously abstained from speculating upon the progress/of the deliberations of the Inter-Party Committee, b)it until mid-day yesterday it was pretty generally expected that Mr Forbes would give the House some indication of the progress that .was being) made. It seeing, now unlikely that the Committee will be ready with its recommendations before the; beginning of next week. Speculation, of course, is rife as to the character of these reports. It is being taken for granted that they will prescribe even greater sacrifices than the community already has faced. The Reform and Labour members of the Committee will .be by this time very much better acquainted with the financial position of the Dominion than they were a month ago and their additional knowledge should be of very great assistance to them in determining the actual situation of the country. As far- as the question of a prolonged life of Parliament, it remains very much in the air WHEAT AGAIN. Mr W. W. Mulhollqnd, the Cbairmain of the Wheatgrowers’ Co-operat-ive Association, writing from Christchurch, takes the “Evening Post to task for suggesting that the farmers, bolstered up by a prohibative tariff, are attaining excessive prices for their produce. “Do you wish to bring thousands of fa rulers in the Dominion to bankruptcy,” he askijb}, “And what for?. That- bread may be one penny per: two-pound loaf cheapen, that thousands may be added to the unemployed and that large profits may aecure tr a few imports.” The “Post’ retorts with spirit. Tn 1929, it says, 216,987 centals of wheat were exported from the Dominion to the United Kingdom. The price in New Zealand at that time was 12s per cental, in England 9s 9d. “The burden of the article referred to by Mr Mulholland, the “Post” maintains, “was not that wheat shouiVl be sold in New Zealand at present world price, but that the wheatgrowers should learn the lesson of equality , of sacrifice.” Here public opinion

rests mainly with the paper

SOUTH TRUNK RAILWAY. It is unfortunate for the good people d Marlborough and Canterbury and in a- measure for these of the West Coast, that the South Island Trunk Railway was not completed according to Sir Julius Vogel’s sc-, while the bulk of the population of the Dominion lay on the other side of Cook Strait. Whether or not the Railway Board was just the body qualified to determine the fate of.-the railway lines in course of construction throughout the country may Mbe open to question, but it is fairly ficertain that Parliament- tile conditions being what they are, will be disposed to leave the South Trunk uncompleted fo rsome years yet to come. There still are many observant people, how- • : -Truoq- . 1 ’ ever, who see a great agricultural and pastoral development along the East Coast and back country of Marlborough. Rightly or wrongly, they maintain .that the members of the Railway Board know little or nothing of this potential wealth, and in any case would he quite incapable of fairly estimating its value

ELECTOR A L R EFOR.M. Although the Local and Pol s Bill which was submitted to ytlie House of Representatives ladt evening by Mr J. McCombs had nothing to do with parliamentary elections the measure of support it receivi d suggests that lie has. made some progress with his persistent appeal for electoral reform. The member -for Lyttel- • ton merely sought to give the Christchurch City Council an opportunity of adopting simpler rules for counting votes cast at elections conducted .on the,- proportional representation prin.ciple . The City Council, he maintained, should he allowed to adopt rules similar to those applied to voting at elections for educational authorities in Scotland, for the Irish Parliament and for municipalities in other places. The Minister of Internal Affairs suggested that the Bill should he submitted to a committee, but Mr 'McCombs preferred te take a vote forthwith and the second reading was rejected by forty-one votes to thirtytwo, a margin narrow enough to sug- ; gest that the House at least is begin- | night to think of electoral reform.