OTHER PAPERS’ OPINIONS

Putaruru Press, Volume IV, Issue 136, 10 June 1926, Page 4

OTHER PAPERS’ OPINIONS

THE BUS REGULATIONS. The Prime Minister referred to the widely expressed dislike of the Government’s procedure in this matter, to the regulation of the buses by Departmental ukase instead of by Statute. “ The difficulty with legislation,” he said, “ is that legislation is always rigid, whereas with regulations you can feel your way and then design regulations with the knowledge gained from practical experience.” This is a rather startling defence of the issue of Orders-in-Council, for it seems to be a claim for vivisection, applied, not to inconsiderable subjects, but to human beings. Many Statutes provide for the issue of regulations to give effect to Parliament’s intentions, and it would be absurd to ask that every Act should contain these regulations, for that would over-bur-den Parliament, and would prevent alterations in detail made necessary by experience. To this issue of Orders-in-Council making regulations that give effect to the clear and precise directions cf an Act nobody need objecft. But in the present case the Order-in-Council not only does not give effect to any clear and precise direction in any Statute, or even to .the general intention of the Legislature as expressed in any Statute, but actually perverts the one clear intention of the Act under which the regulations purport to be made. There is little likelihood that bc.th Houses of Parliament will condemn the regulations, and so cancel them, for obvious enough reasons. But there would have been as little likelihood that Parliament would have agreed to these regulations if they had come before it in the form of a Bill, and the bubMc would feel easier in its mind if the regulations were withdrawn until Parliament had an opportunity of dealing with .them otherwise .than as a fait accompli.— CTiri s tchur cli Press.