PARLIAMENT.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4796, 5 August 1876, Page 2

PARLIAMENT.

HOUSE OP REPRESENTATIVES. Friday, August 4. The Speaker took the chair at half-past two o’clock. PETITIONS, ETC. Several petitions were presented and notices of motion given. QUESTIONS. Mr. BURNS asked the Minister for Public Works, —If any tenders for railway rolling stock have been received and accepted in accordance with advertisements printed in various newspapers throughout the colony ? The Hon. Mr. RICHARDSON said a large number of tenders had been received from various portions of the colony. The tenders were by telegraph in most cases, and until details were forwarded by post no definite opinion on their fitness could be given, but he might say that there was little doubt about the probability of their being able to accept satisfactory tenders in the colony. Mr. TOLE asked the Minister for Public Works, —If he will lay before this House a list showing the names of the claimants who have demanded, or who have signified their intention of demanding, compensation for land traversed by the recently amended route of the Riverhead railway extension to Auckland; and also the dates and amounts of such demands respectively ? The Hon. Mr. RICHARDSON said he was not in a position to give the information at present, which was of a semi-private nature, but subsequently it might be afforded. Mr. MURRAY asked the Minister for Public Works, —If he had any information as to the feasibility and probable cost of a railway Lawrence by Cromwell to Jackson Bay, and if he will place this House in possession of this and any other information he has in connection with such railway ? The Hon. Mr. RICHARDSON said Government had no official information whatever on the subject. Mr. BRYCE asked the Premier, —Whether the Government have had under their consideration the report of the Public Petitions Committee of last session on the petition of certain inhabitants of Wanganui, in reference to the so-called Industrial School Grant of that town ; and if so, whether they intend to bring down a Bill during the present session dealing with the question ? The Hon. Sir JULIUS VOGEL said that if he could not give a satisfactory answer it was not for want of trouble taken. Th§ original grant gave a number of sections iri Wanganui, the trustees being mostly resident out of Wanganui, and consequently there was little done to further the objects of the trust. The Government agreed that something must be done to carry out the original purposes of the grant, but to go to law would be to sacrifice the estate for lawyers. Accordingly, conciliation was adopted, and a letter had been addressed to the Episcopal Bishop of Wellington, making suggestions for the management of the trust, for the grant had come to be looked upon as a Church of England affair. The result of the letter and of previous conversations with the Bishop was that the Bishop could not accept the proposals. If Mr. Bryce, therefore, would introduce a Bill to deal with the matter, the Government would support it to its second reading, on condition that then it should be referred to a select committee to report upon. Mr. STOUT asked the Premier, —In the event of the Otago Museum being placed under the management of trustees or the Education Beard, if the Government will place a sum on the supplementary estimates sufficient to provide for its completion and maintenance 1 The Hon. Sir JULIUS VOGEL said that the Government could not with any advantage carry on more than one museum in the colony. The Otago Museum should come under local management similar to that under which the Auckland and Canterbury museums were conducted. A QUESTION OP PRIVILEGE. Before proceeding to the orders of the day, Sir George Grey raised a question of privilege. A letter of Mr. Thomas Russell’s, in connection with the Opongo block, to Dr. Pollen, which had been tabled in the House, was now removed from the documents together with which it had been tabled. He moved that it should be attached to the documents. The Hou. Sir DONALD McLEAN pointed out that the order affected the House, not the Government. The document, if missing, had disappeared in the House, the officers of which were responsible for it. The motion was carried, the Speaker saying that it would affect whoever it referred to. THE SEPARATION RESOLUTIONS. The adjourned debate on these resolutions was resumed by Mr. REES, who said that before proceeding to the discussion of the resolutions he would reply to a remark made by the Premier in reference to what had been said by Sir George Grey when introducing the resolutions. It did not surprise him to hear the Premier call Sir George Grey visionary; but the Premier ought to know that all his own schemes and '

utterances in the House were visionary in the extreme, as witness his visionary calculation about education the other night, in which he showed that the education of 350 boys would' realise enough to pay off the public debt of the colony. Again, there was the South Sea scheme, which was good at first, but so soon as it came into the Premier’s hands it grew into a bubble. The Premier in fact, it should be said in explanation, could not understand the arguments of one so intellectually his superior as Sir George Grey, and therefore called that gentleman visionary. For his own (Mr. Rees) part, since he had heard the Premier speak he had wondered how people had come to think so .much of like Sir Julius Vogel. As for the Premier’s remarks on the grammar of the resolutions At this stage the Speaker called Mr. Rees to order, and asked him not to travel beyond the courtesies of debate. Mr. REES denied that the resolutions of Sir George Grey were designed to catch votes here and there. The Premier in his speech had said that it was his duty to be very plain, and in deference to that he (Mr. Rees) thought it his duty to be very plain. He would like to know what the Premier meant by saying that many gentlemen who would vote for Sir George Grey’s resolutions would sooner cut off their right hands than place that gentleman in power. He defied the Premier to name a single member to whom these observations would apply. It would have been more decent for the Premier to have come down this session and told the House that his Government regretted that they had broken every pledge and destroyed the credit of the colony, rather than to have told Sir George Grey that he should' have expressed regret for having opposed abolition. The supporters of the resolutions did not intend that the Colonial Government should vanish; they contemplated that it should remain to deal with great questions of law, ■whilst mere local matters ’should be left to the respective governments of the two provinces. The Premier said these proposals would create three governments. Why, the Premier’s CountiesBill would create 39 expensive governments, not at all meeting the requirements of the colony, if those requirements meant economy. The first resolution touched finance, of which they had heard a good deal lately, without any light being thrown on the subject, so involved had it become, a fact admitted by the Premier himself. He (Mr. Rees) had taken some trouble to inform himself on the matter, and he could assure the House that the financial condition of the country was most critical, and unless attended to would plunge the colony into disaster. The Financial Statement of the Premier was delusive, and did not place the state of affairs in its true light. In the statements of Major Atkinson and Mr. Richardson, brought down last session, there'were serious discrepancies in the amounts expended under the Public Works scheme, and in the liabilities incurred under the same. The discrepancies amounted to nearly £1,000,000 in railway expenditure, and in road expenditure to £IBO,OOO. The tables attached to these statements had been published within four days of each other, and yet contained these discrepancies. In the Statement this year of the Premier there were also serious errors. When he (Mr. Rees) had spoken of the Premier’s finance his remarks had been characterised as wild by Sir Julius Vogel, yet that gentleman had absolutely by a stroke of his pen corrected the mistakes pointed out by the speaker. The public accounts last year were not properly balanced, and the same was the case this year. On income and expenditure this year the colony had gone to the bad to the amount of £400,000. Payments which should have been made last year were slid over into the present year, and would have to be paid out of current income. If members, too, would contrast the items of expenditure as put down in the Financial Stalement with the actual amounts recorded in the tables attached to that Statement, they would findjhem wrong in almost every particular, showing that they had been put down by means of mere reckless guesswork. They were about £IOO,OOO out on an expenditure of £700,000. This should arrest the attention of members, for next year at this rate the country would be £500,000 out. By the end of the March quarter in the last financial year the whole of the £4,000,000 had been used up, and the Government had since been carrying on by means of the balance of loans authorised to be raised, guaranteed and unguaranteed. On these £1,500,000 had been raised, of which £600,000 had been spent oo works, and with payment of interest on loans and other expenditure, only some £600,000 was left, and yet the Government had taken credit for £1,400,000. With these things before them, hon. members would do well to consider the position of the country, for if preparations were not made for the coming ruin that ruin would be merited. Mr. Rees read extracts from his pamphlet to show that none of the financial promises made by the Premier when he introduced his Public Works and Immigration policy, and on the faith of which that policy had been endorsed by-the country, had been fulfilled; they had all been deliberately and consecutively broken. The people would now therefore have to take care that a different course was shaped. From all the so-called deposits in the Bank of New Zealand not one penny of interest had been received by the colony. The Premier and the Government were responsible for bringing down illusionary I statements, which led the people of the country to believe it was in a better position than it really was. And the calculations for the future were not less nonsensical than those for the past. The estimates made for taking over the whole of the working expenses of the provinces were fallacious. The country would see what it saw last year, a much greater expenditure than was anticipated. The calculated income was also illusory, as would be found when the public works were completed and the consequent reaction set in, for which reaction not the slightest preparation was being made. The alteration of the constitution involved in the separation resolutions had to be next considered. New Zealand started as a colony with the greatest advantages, having before her all the experience of the past of other colonies. After a time it came to be that the existence of the colony and the Government depended on public works and immigration; and this he considered a great mistake, dragging down Government into a mere board of works, and the financial separation proposed and the constitution to be formed under it would again raise Government from the position of merely subsisting for the prosecution of public works. Government would not then have to carried on under such measures as the disgraceful Disqualification Act Amendment Act. The discussions on the new constitution they were to adopt he did not doubt would become great in history, and in these discussions they should permit no unworthy or selfish motives to actuate them. He deprecated the laughing at or holding up to scorn of those who approached the question of a new constitution from some higher standpoint than that of public works. The work now to be accomplished would, when they had passed away, be regarded as of far higher import than they attached to it. Mr. Rees criticised the Government proposals at considerable length, and condemned them, and then contended that the proposals for three governments under the separation resolutions, such a fhe had described previously, would be far moy*a3Vsntageous to the country. The proposals were not new to the colony, and there was nothing about them of a startling nature, they were intended to permit the people of the two islands to work out their own destinies. There was deep feeling on this question in North and South, and so deep was that feeling that threats of armed resistance to the Government proposals had been heard, and many cases in which in other countries an armed resistance to measures had arisen were analogous to that of New Zealand at present. He warned members that the people of the North and South might make an armed resistance to an invasion of their rights and privileges. The House adjourned for dinner. At 7.30, Mr. REES resumed his speech by commenting upon tho news which that afternoon had been received from England respecting the New Zealand debentures. He said it was very clear from the telegram that either the Government were not aware of the negotiations being carried oa in England, or that they

were cognisant of them and had wil- j fully misled the , House. He took the opportunity of urging that the future Agent Genera], or any officer who might be appointed to conduct financial matters for the colony in England, should be restricted in his operations. He then adverted to the administrative actions of the Government, and in criticising them said it was rumored that the appointment of the present Chief _J ustice had been influenced by personal feeling ; in fact, that had it not been for ill-feeling between the wife of a Minister and the wife of a Judge of the Supreme Court, another gentleman, who from his long service had had aright to expect the office, wouldhavo been appointed. He spoke of personal motives having also influenced an appointment to tltf District Court Bench, and nsinuated thaflhrough the representations of the Native Minister Major Eoberts had been unfairly treated because he had committed Major Pitt for trial on a charge of bribery in connection with the East Coast election-an election in which, by the way, the Native Minister had taken part by actively supporting one of the candidates, Captain Read, as he had also done in the Eastern Maori eloetionby opposing Karaitiana. Such administration was shocking; but this was not all. Statements were so frequently made from the Ministerial benches which proved untrue, that it was difficult to know when the House was being told the truth. He also referred to the dealings of the Native and Land Purchase departments, and alleged that reserves made by Sir George Grey when Governor for the benefit of the natives at Hawke’s Bay, had been acquired by the Native Minister. Mr. Kees charged the department with bribing the natives on all sides, especially during the visit of the Native Minister to Tawhiao, and while on this subject gave a circumstantial account of how the Native Minister had met red-handed murderers, and then scolded the Southern Cross reporter for having mentioned the fact of the murderers having been present, he telling the reporter that he had “spoiled the whole thing,” whatever » spoiled” might mean in this case. The conduct of the Native Minister was unparalleled in the history of any colony or any country. He spoke in similar terms of the conduct of the native laud policy of the Government. About £600,000 had been spent by the Land Purchase department, and what represented it now? Absolutely nothing. It was reported that large sums of money had been paid to persons who had no interest in laud, and that if the land were required it would be necessary to repurchase it. Leaving this subject, he alleged that the Ministry was keeping itself in office by bribes to districts. Look, for instance, at votes for districts north of Auckland, central prison and breakwater at Taranaki, protective works on the West Coast ; all these works were proposed for the purpose of purchasing political support. But not only this, the most sacred rites of hospitality were brought in as a means to an end. He spoke of the dinner-parties and entertainments of the Hon. Sir Julius Vogel and Lady Vogel, and said they were given with the sole object of purchasing political support. (No, no ; hisses, and cheers). It was so, and he should read a paragraph in the Wakatip Mail, which was popularly supposed to have been written by a member of the House. ... - Mr. MANDEBS rose to a point of order, and said the paragraph in question had been taken out of a private letter he had sent to the proprietor of the paper. He was sorry it had been printed ; it had been bad taste to make it public, still he endorsed what was said in it. Mr. REES said he would not read the paragraph, and then passed on to comment on the conduct of the Premier in drawing money when in England. He said he had drawn money which he had no right to do, yet if an unfortunate clerk took £2O more than his salary, he would be placed in the dock as a criminal. The Premier,j occupying the high official position he did, had set a most pernicious example to the whole Civil Service. No jury could convict, and no judge could sentence any man who in future purloined money from the public chest, since tho culprit could aa y j “ Why the Premier himself took £3000,” He then eulogised Sir George Grey for his high character and great genius, and compared the propositions of the Government with the propositions of the hon. member for the Thames. The resolutions of the hon. member for the Thames would give real local self-government, and the House would earn the gratitude of the country if it accepted these propositions and rejected the Government’s. (Applause.) Mr. WASON commenced by commenting upon the absence of the Premier, and then proceeded to give the reasons which induced him to vote for the resolution. He as a representative of an outlying district had hailed abolition of the provinces as a great boon, but he had been much disappointed with the proposals of the Government as not giving local self-government or providing satisfactory institutions for the country. Last year the Road Boards were to get two pounds for one raised in the district; this year it was £1 for £l. Last year they were to get publicans’ licenses and other fees arising within the districts ; this year that source of revenue was thrown over to the counties. The proposals in respect to land were equally unfair. Those who paid £2 per acre for their land were placed on the same footing as those speculators who had paid 2s. 6d. per acre and less. He then proceeded to criticise the remarks of the Hon. Sir Julius Vogel in reply to Sir George Grey. He thought it must be agieed that it would be better to have three governments conjointly, costing leas than one government, such as was proposed. With regard to his statement that the Opposition members would be breaking the compact of 1856 by going into the lobbies in favor of separation, he said it was not the Opposition but the Government who by their present 'action were breaking the compact of 1856. He should vote for the resolutions brought down by Sir George Grey, but should do so with regret, and would look forward with hope to the day when the natural separation of the two parts of the colony should come to pass. The resolutions of the hon. member might tide them over present difficulties, but the day would come when resolutions for separation would be brought down again, and when they would sweep all before them. He referred to the difference in legislation required for each island, and asked whether it was not better that they should pay a little more for the three governments proposed, than for a section of the House to attempt to legislate on a subject of which they knew nothing. , Mr. LUSK said he approached the consideration of the subject with considerable diffidence, because he thought many others of experience should have come forward to enlighten young members. The conduct of the Government was not calculated to give credit to their names, or be of advantage to the principles they were said to profess. If they had nothing to say, the more was the pity for them. It was a duty which he believed all members would agree with him in saying the Government and their supporters owed to the House and the country, that they should give expression to their views. In reading over the resolutions of Sir George Grey one was naturally' struck by the assertion that the times were so critical that they demanded serious attention. Such was tho dictum expressed by every independent organ throughout ' tho country. The state of public feStog might be expressed as being at present 7»ne of very, great alarm. It was felt that tho policy initiated some years ago was drawing to a conclusion, and that serious trouble was looming in the future.. Our credit was sinking, as the Premier had reluctantly admitted, sinking so low that our debentures could not be placed in tho English market; and unless this downward course were stopped, the result would be that the country would be landed in a disastrous abyss. If they turned to the speeches of public men in the past, they would find that some of those who were candidates and who were elected had strangely altered their opinions on the subject. The Government and their supporters would say that the present state of alarm was due to the machinations of disappointed provincialists. But ho had a higher opinion of tho people of the colony than to suppose they were to be so gulled. There were other and potent reasons for such uneasiness. This cry about provincial extravagance and machina

tions was an old and worn-out cry; but the cause of the distrust and was extravagance, which formed the very basis of the administration of all our public institutions, i o give some idea of what he meant he had collected a few facts and figures. He had compared the expenditure of this with other colonies on departments of government, confining himself merely to that expenditure which 'showed no return at all. He referred to South Africa, and the defence and native expenditure there. The European population in 1875 was something under 25,000 souls ; native population, 500,000 ; and therefore it was a [very much larger community on the whole than that of New Zealand. The revenue of the former colony in 1875 was £1,445,000, and from that revenue all but £358,000 was devoted to reproductive works of same, and from that £358,000 there was taken £125 for defence and native purposes. If hon. members would bear this in mind, and look at the aspect of the colony at that time—its records of difficulty and disaster—it would be apparent to hon. members that the expenditure of South Africa should be greater than the legitimate expenditure of New Zealand. He then proceeded to compare the population, income, and expenditure of the colonies of New South Wales and Victoria with New Zealand, to the disadvantage of this colony. Comparing the state of New Zealand in 1870, when the Immigration and Public Works policy was initiated, with the present year, he stated that the increase of expenditure on unreproductive works was far from being calculated to place the colony on a sound financial basis. He compared the Wellington of 1865 with Wellington of the present day. Other provinces had paid large sums of money, but none had received so much in return. The population of Wellington was of a melancholy character ; a population almost entirely of Civil Servants ; a population artificial, unhealthy, and necessarily corrosive on the constitution of the colony; and this state of things would be continued by [ the new system which they had been told would do so much for the people of New Zealand. The object of’ the Government, they would say, was decentralisation ; but in what they proposed they only increased the centres, and created thirty-nine bastard provinces, which in fact was not decentralisation. He was gratified, therefore, when he read the proposals which had been brought down by the hon. member for the Thames. New constitutions should be the result of the peculiarities of the places to be affected and of the experience and instincts of the people. The North and Middle Islands were dissimilar in climate, people, and circumstances; they were naturally severed, and the people of those respective islands should be allowed to work out their own future unembarrassed by that continual interference and misunderstanding which arose out of the ignorance of one community as to the wants and requirements of the other. There were many other members well able to take up different views, and to enlighten the House upon this all-important question. He believed many members were conscientiously opposed to anything like separation of the islands ; and he respected whilst he disagreed with those members. But it would be well for them to set aside sentiment for sound common sense. He would say to them that he valued more the real present good of the country than the possible future good. It was not always the biggest State that was the most prosperous and happy. As to the imputation that the North Island desired to place a burden on the South, he pointed out that the North Island still had an incubus of native difficulty. Now was the time, while there was still some small remnant of its land fund left to the South Island, and while adversity had not completely overtaken Auckland,' that these proposals should be accepted. The House then adjourned for half an hour, and resuming, there were cries of “ question” and “ divide.” Mr. FITZROY then rose and said he should be sorry to see a division taken before he had said a few words. He thought the manner in which the debate had been conducted by the Opposition was disgraceful. It was necessary on a question of this kind coming before the House that some of the older and more experienced members should come forward and try to help the younger and less experienced members, in which case a better understanding of the whole question would have been arrived at. The hon. member for Auckland City East had taken up the time of the House for four hours that day ; but so far as he (the speaker) could understand from that gentleman, it appeared to be a general allround sort of hitting, which contained not a single useful piece of information. That speech, which was heard by all (for the hongentleman was loud in the matter of voice), and understood perhaps by very few, was followed by one from another gentleman from Auckland, the hon. member for Franklin, who also was pleased to go all round the compass, with no apparent object further than to convey as little information as possible to the House, and winding up with a distinct threat to Canterbury members that if they did not now vote for separation they would be too late, as the Auckland people would not be with them another time. If nothing more forcible were adduced in favor of the resolutions than that which the two lastnamed members had brought forward, he quite understood that the Canterbury members would rather remain as they were. If the members of the House would conscientiously work together for the good and welfare of the colony, they surely would be able to make something out of the Government proposals, (Hear, hear, and laughter from the Opposition benches). But so far as he could see there had been no disposition on the part of Opposition members to give the matter dispassionate and unbiassed consideration. The present debate commenced' with the proposal of Sir George Grey’s resolutions, which were called separation resolutions; but if it had not been for the name given them he defied any one to* know what they were about. The debate had resolved itself into a strange mixture, consisting of very little in the direction of separation, a good deal of financial debate, and a good deal more in the direction of want of confidence. He thought it would have been far more honorable on the part of those gentlemen who had initiated the present debate had they come forward in a straightforward manner and stated that their object was to secure a want of confidence vote. (Applause), The honorable member for Auckland City East had said that the Immigration and Public Works scheme was the one great fault of the Government, and a calamity to the colony ; that it had run away with enormous sums of money, and was the cause of lavish and extravagant expenditure. He (Mr. Fitzroy) did not mean to say that there had not been in certain cases some instances of extravagance, but be maintained that if so, it had been forced on by the will of the people and nothing else, the Public Works scheme being found of such benefit to the country. In reference to another portion of Mr. Rees speech, he very much regretted gentleman should have gone out of his way or should have had such bad taste as to have brought in the private hospitality of any honorable member of that House. (Applause.) He would not say more on this subject than that he considered, as he believed every member in the House would consider, such a reference as being in the very worst possible taste. Reverting to the separation resolutions of Sir George Grey, he repeated that they were not in themselves comprehensible ; but he might say that if any hon. member who was a supporter of the resolutions would get up and show the House that the government of the colony could be worked cheaper under those proposals than under the proposals of the Government, he would vote for them ; but until this could be satisfactorily shown him, he would sooner that the constitution should remain as it was. Mr THOMSON complained that no speech had come from the Government benches, and he presumed that the gentlemen occupying those benches acted on the motto that speech was gold and silence was iron. (Ironical laughter.) But the country was not silent. The question before the House was no doubt the great topic of conversation all over New Zealand, and the general conclusion was j that the arguments of her Majesty's Opposition ' were correct. Ho thought that Sir George

Grey was right in not going into details in his resolutions, because had he done so the House would have been occupied in discussing details instead of in affirming a principle. For himself, he thought that if would have been better had they instead of carrying abolition agreed upon modifying the provincial system, and if they had done so that system would have acted as a handmaiden to the General Government. Mr. BUTTON moved the adjournment of the debate. Mr. STOUT supported, and the adjournment was taken until half-past two o’clock on Tuesday. The House then adjourned.