OUR LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 3 April 1914, Page 4

OUR LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.

The Prime Minister is making it clear throughout the country that the Bill for the alteration of the constitution of the Legislative Council is to be brought ,down again for the third time. Frankly we think it is a pity. The Council at present has one constitency, and that is the whole Dominion. Change its appointment to election and you at once give it a narrow constituency. The Councillor elected is no longer free to vote as he thinks best for the good of the whole people. The answer by those who support the elective principle for the Council is that it is more democratic. To that the reply is that the Council doesn't exist for. the purpose of passing this or that thing into law, according to promises, given to this or that constituency' That is the function of the Representative Chamber, a function which does not require to be done twice, and can not be done twice without a clash between the doors. The function of the Cquncil is simply to watch the course of legislation for the purpose of preventing any hasty break away I from being mistaken for the will! of the people. There is also the valuable work of revision, but that does not require election.

Nomination is putting the choice of the final guardians of the popular power into tho hmds of the representative.- of tivi people (otherwise the government), and that is as strongly democratic an arrangement as coul 1 b<> devised. Make the CguiK-ii elective and you produce danger of deadlock, -•lake it more representative than the representative House-- -which this Bilj. cjamj.s to cio bei-fuise it offers Proportional Representation which all are-agj-'eed \s fetter than the system of iirst on top — and yon create a claim for at least equal powers for the Second Chamber.

It is true that . the Liberal party'for the twenty-one years' of its power never put into the

Council a single man from the other side—never until Sir Joseph Ward appointed Mr Sinclair, Mr Samuel, and one or two others that could be named, who were not of the Liberal party—as may be seen in Hansard. But it is also true that the present government failed to realise that the Councillors have all assimilated the true idea of their position in the Constitution. Therefore while in Opposition they conceived the policy of radical amendment in the democratic direction. But this wrong conception of the Council they ought to admit and thereupon withdraw their measure frankly taking their responsibility of making their full share of appointments. From the Party point of view we really think that it matters little whd makes the appointments. Because all the appoinees acquire the true view of the constitutional position of the Council. Even if the appointments were to become the recognised reward of political service the end would always be the same —a council knowing its high duty and ready at all times to do it.

We should prefer to see the line drawn of merit rather than party, because merit has been often passed over when it ought fco have been nominated—notably in the case of the late Sir F. D. Bell, whom Mr Ballance's government would not appoint on his return from the Agency-General in 1891. In any case the proposed reform is quite without merit or necessity.