WELLINGTON TOPICS

Hokitika Guardian, 21 March 1932, Page 3

WELLINGTON TOPICS

COST OP PARLIAMENT.

(REDUCTIONS PROPOSED

(Special Correspondent.)

WELLINGTON, March 17

In a preliminary report of the National (Expenditure Commission, set up by the Government some weeks ago, there are a number of suggestions bearing upon the constitution and maintenance of the Dominion’s Parliament which are likely to attract a good deal of attention from observant people. The Commission points out that if the nunfber of members of the British House of Commons bore the same ratio to the population of Great Britain as the members of the New Zealand House of Representatives bear to the population of this country the number of members of the House of Commons 'would 'be well over two thousand, while as a. matter of fact it is less than one third of that number. This statement is correct enough, so far as it goes, since the British House has 615 members and the New Zealand House, . including the four Maori representatives, eighty ; but these figures standing alone are scarcel.y good ground for reducing the New Zealand House to less than /a dozen members. Taking everything into account, member for member, New Zealand politicians work (just as hard as do those of the Mother Country.

ECONOMISING

Of course while suggesting a'reduction in the number of the House of Repre-, senfctivois the Commission has directed attention to the expediency of a corresponding reduction in the number <if members of the other branch of the Legislature. “We are also of the opinion,” we are told in' the Commission’s report, “that a reduction of the number of members of .the House of Representatives should be followed by a reduction in the membership of the Legislative Council.” This would be a problem even more intricate .than the reduction of the membership of the' House of Representatives. The number of members of the Legislative Council is not determined by statute. The Government of the day, with the approval of the King’s representative in the Dominion, may create a* many councillors as it pleases, and it wijl be remembered that away back in the early nineties, Mr John Ballance demonstrated that in this -respect a dominant party might override the will of a Governor-General. The “Commons” will have to move warily when they l.ay_ their hands on the “Lords.”

.SAVING AND FUTURE

In other respects, keeping reasonably within their own sphere, the members of the Commission have submitted to the Government a number qf very useful suggestions. Some of the proposals for reduction or extinction of pensions, which -jhave been .taken for granted during the fruitful years of the past, may be, however, a little disquieting in the .absence of further information—subsidies and allowances from the N a‘ional Provident Fund running into thousands and pensions from the Family Allowance Act and other measures amounting to many thousands more —but it still remains for the Government to determine, how far the suggestions of the Commission are fo be endorsed. Then one cannot regard without some compunction a further demand of £l,164,000 upon the very moderate salaries of the majority of the Civil .Servants; ian increase of £500,000 in motor taxation and minor exploitations of thp ■same kind in other directions. If the Government in its extremity should act upon the .suggestion oi the ('.•)"• mission in (these respects it at least should see that the Civil Servants are not forgotten in the. more prosperous days to come.

POLITICS AND POLITICIANS

Reverting to the questions of politics and politicians it may he said without any reflection upon the members of the National Expenditure Commission, whose'labours are not yet completed, that they are at some disadvantage in their present undertaking owing to their detachment from the political life of the country, it has not been their business —or they havenot thought it to be their business —to give up hours of their time to the routine of the House of Representatives or even to the less intolerable routine of the Legislative Council, with the result that when they are loaded with such public burdens as they are bearing; at the present time they are not able* to fully realise the measure and magnitude of their undertaking. The pity of it is that the existing system of election to the House of Representatives does not provide the Dominion with an informed group of eeonomic experts who would servo all sections of the community in that rosneet. Politicians of this kind occasionally appear in the nominated Chamber, hut in the elected Chamber only at long intervals.