CABINET'S OPPORTUNITY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 186, 31 March 1932, Page 4

CABINET'S OPPORTUNITY

Interviewed by the "Post's" Parliamentary commissioner the Prime Ministerj the Rt. Hon. G. W. Forbes said that he proposes for Cabinet a week of work under high pressure in the preparation of the Government's legislative programme for the remainder of the present emergency session of Parliament. Does this really indicate that Mr. Forbes and his colleagues have at last bdfen sci^ed With a realisatiOn that there is a real need to. act urgently and not merely talk about urgeney? If they have lbdfnod this Iesson, that much at least has been gained as a result of the past four weeks of talking, and it may even not be unduly optimistic to hope that other lessons have begun to take effect. Of these, by far the most important is the f act that upon the legislation passed by the present session wiH'largely depend th'e rate and the degree of the country's recovery. What is done now v/ill, bedause bf its necessarily drastic riatur'e, have far-reaching and lasting effects ,either for good of ill. To date, surveying the Government's record , it is not easy to believe that its members tilidefStahd this impoptant faet, most of the legislation it has proposed haviiig been framed at the last moment, \vith haste and ofteil carolessness and sometimes even an obvious failiire to recognise its true import. Under such conditions real progress is hardly to be expected. It is therefore greatly to be hoped that Cabinet has at last begun to recognise its shocking failure to date to come anywhere near living up to its promises and is really making an effort to justify itself. Its1 task is not ab enviable one aild it is fodiind to get rnfcife kicks than ha'pence, but it is a task which must be imdertaken and carried to completion with all the fbr eSight, all the sympathy and' all the courage of which its fnembers individually and collectively are capable.