WELLINGTON TOPICS

Hokitika Guardian, 17 November 1932, Page 6

WELLINGTON TOPICS

BREACH OF PRIVILEGE.

MR MACINTOSH’S STAND

(Special Correspondent).

WELLINGTONr November 14

A (breach of privilege when brought before the House of Representative.? rarely occasions more than an apology and an expression of regret from the offender and an admonition from the Speaker not to offend again. Mr A. Macintosh, a member of the National Expenditure Commission, however, did not fere quite so well as, this when he added to the report of the Commission a paragraph to the effect "that many members of Parliament by way of placating constituencies, and, possibly, securing continuity of membership, have, year after year, made inroads upon the Treasury for various objects in numerous instances 'vitlr no prospect of an adequate or any return on the expenditure involved.” This statement quickened the susceptibilities of the members of the Labour Party, particularly those of Mr H. E. Holland and Mr Peter Fraser, who sought to strengthen their case by casting reproaches upon Mr Macintosh whose candour evidently displeased them.

LABOUR’S OUTBURST.

•Just why members of the Labour Party should have heaped reproofs upon Mr Macintosh it is difficult to conceive, since the victim of their venom had carefully avoided pe r sonal suggestions- in his contribution to the Commission’s report and in his crorsexiTnination by the Parliamentary Committee. Yet Mr Peter Fraser poured forth (a perfect tirade of innuendos against hi.s victim, most of it unsuited for repetition. “What was apparently a serious matter,” he said, “had ended in a. farce. Mr Macintosh had been lionized by the -press, yet thp scene in the front of the Committee was most pathetic, . . He was asked gently, craveningly in fact, if he could produce the e v idence or do something to justify his statements and hi s only pjea ivas ‘Don’t ask me.’ ” Lookers on declare that no more distorted conception of the facts could be invented. Mr Macintosh simply had declined to withdraw the information he had personally verified and communicated to his colleagues.

OUT (OF THE. PAST,

Apropos of thi s incident, ivhich has been discussed throughout the Dominion for a week or more, it is a little surprising' 'to find a leading metropolitan newspaper dragging the memories of John Ballance. 'Ricnard Seddon and Joseph Ward into a public controversy of the present day with which these political leadens of the past certainly had no more to do than had their contemporaries, Atkinson, Stout and Massey. “Ballance- and Seddon,” the public -is iitqid, “triumphed over a crisis very 'like the present'one by the application lof principles practically indistinguishable from those, of the Labour ’Party to-day. .. . .iEv r en then the capitalist press was engaged in rendering /to the 'cause of democracy the wicked . cUsservice of telling the truth.” Just what all this is intended to mean it -would be difficult for the mere layman to 'say. A tw o column leading article does not disclose the j e st.

LOST ‘HUMOUR

Mr Seddon, who was not lacking in. humour nor in its enjoyment, like father artists of the kind was not always successful iu his efforts to amuse. Lord 'Bryce in his ’‘Modern Democracies” embalmed one of th© jovial Minister’s quips of thirty odd years ag° and apparently it is abroad again. ‘‘l am not on© of those who say that other thmgs being equal I should not favour the district that was represented by one ’who helped to maintain the Government in power,” Mr 'Seddon is made to say. “It is unreasonable and unnatural to expect the Government to look with the same kindly 'eye on districts returning members opposed to the Government as on those that returned Government supporters.” Obviously either Mr Seddon was joking with difficulty when b© uttered these words or Lord Bryce, unaccustomed to such frivolous jests, was unable to appreciate their application.