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New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4157, 17 July 1874, Page 2

The acoustic properties of tho Chamber in which the elected representatives of the Colony meet were discussed parenthetically in tho House last night. One member complained that not one-half of what honorable members said could be heard by him and the hon. gentlemen who sat next him. Others wore of opinion that in this respect matters were worse than they wore last session, and were bold enough to hold the opinion that the curtains with which the walls are draped had added to the difficulty they were intended to lessen. More thought the arrangement of tho seats of members had something to do with it, and felt that a member speaking from tho back benches, and seeing tho faces of no more than about a sixth of tho number of tho membersjof the House when ho was speaking, was not only unable to address himself satisfactorily to the question before the House, but to make the members, whose backs alone ho saw, hear, not to say understand, tho arguments he was addressing to them. The hon. tho Speaker was good enough to say that he had tho assurance of tho reporters that they could hear very well what ho said ; and the remark was certainly not met by tho answer of an honorable member, that if tho Speaker, when he spoke, was clearly heard in all parts of tho House, it was duo to tho fact that, when ho addressed tho House, he spoke with his face towards honorable members. The truth is that tho House in which tho members of tho second Chamber of Parliament meet is radically defective in its acoustic properties. It is impossible to make a hall, with a roof so broken by projecting supporters of the arch—and wo avoid technical terms in speaking on this matter—a good chamber for sound. That difficulty is enormously increased by

the fact of two galleries, one on eacli side, being extended beyond tlio walls of the Chamber itself. Those projecting arches must interrupt and split up the sound which ascends to the roof to be there distributed, and the wide galleries absorb and dissipate what otherwise would be returned to the lower floor. The worsted hangings, and the coverings of the same material erected over the heads of the members who -nit dose to the wall on both sides of the House, must also assist in stopping and absorbing sound and render the chamber worse—as hon. members have observed—then it was before. These peculiarities in the original plan of the hall render it all but impossible that the House of Representatives can ever be made a desirable place to speak in, from an acoustic point of view ; and we should like to know, merely as a matter of curiosity, on what possible view of the case the use of those worsted or flannel draperies was proposed. The arrangements of the Chamber are equally open to objection. It is pretty, no doubt, to see regular Treasury benches, Opposition benches, Ministerial cross-benches, and Opposition cross-benches, tenanted by some seventyeight members. But it is doubtful whether the Ministers who directed the planning of the House were altogether wise in following the American rather than the English model. Of course it is invigorating to a country elector to peep down from the Speaker’s gallery, or look on unobtrusively from that of the Strangers ; and it must impress very seriously the hearts of the ladies who occasionally grace the gallery specially accorded to them, and do a little useful work in the white-seam or crotchet-way, while they drink in the imperfectly-heard words of wisdom that come to them from the floor of the House, to see seventy or more gentlemen all seated at their desks, pen in hand, papers on papers piled before them, and a whole century of wisdom concentrated in the energy with which they devote themselves to the making of notes, the preparation of speeches, the intelligence they must forward to their constituents on passing matters in the House, and the countless other important subjects on which the pens and ink provided by the State are employed on the stationery purchased by a generous people for public purposes. But a better model might have been followed. It is not recorded that the American system has been, more successful than the English. Wo have not adopted the spittoon—we might as well have omitted the desk. In Victoria the House of Assembly accommodates precisely the same number of members ; the Chamber is not all that could be desired—so far as the reporters are concerned—.as to its acoustia properties, but the members can at least hear each other speak. There, benches are provided, four rows of which run round three sides of the room. The Ministry sit on the front bench, on the right of the Speaker, with their strongest supporters behind them. The Opposition are similarly accommodated on the left—the sheep and the goats. The “cross” benches are not “cross bench,’’but curved. Each of the back benches are raised considerably the one above the other, so that no member speaks to another’s back. No member has a desk ; but each member has a drawer beneath his seat, in which he keeps the papers and documents which he means to use in the debate which is on, or expected to come on immediately. His other papers are placed for him in a locked box in another room. In the centre of the Chamber is a table provided with writing materials, where members write letters which they cannot give the time to do in the private rooms provided for the purpose, or which they must do, it they do at all, in the Chamber, lest they run the risk of being excluded on a division. The Victorian arrangement is much better that the New Zealand one.

The House of the Representatives however, is built. Its faults are radical and incurable. Members must endure the evils they know of till the time comes when another chamber can be built, on a more scientific design. Suggestions made in the course of the conversation yesterday, and others that may be added, will contribute much, if acted on, to make the defects of the House less realisable than they are. If a member who presents a petition, for example, and expects its purport to be reported in the morning papers as well as in Hansard —for in these matters the reports of this journal receive no assistance from the officers of the House —will only speak out, in place of mumbling his words as ho approaches the chair, members will hoar him, and the Press be able to report him. If a member who submits a motion will only speak to the House, in place of whispering to those around him, or addressing a remark in an undertone to the Speaker, the strangers in the gallery will bo able to know what is going on as well as the members—though the interests of the strangers may be of little moment to the House. If members who have important subjects to present to the Chamber will concern themselves with the thought that they are not speaking merely to the official reporters of the House, and will not close-their most important utterances in whispers which they themselves only hear, thou members—and the press—will have less to complain of. Lastly, if the “hum of conversation” which the Speaker has been asked to suppress, and has promised to endeavor to do, is put an end to by the care of honorable members themselves, then the business which goes on will be more intelligible to hon. members themselves, and will have a better chance of reaching the country through the Press —which is better, as well as more useful, for moat practical purposes, than being buried under the load of typo which forms the annual official record of the Proceedings of Parliament.