EARLY MORNING ANTICS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 460, 18 February 1933, Page 4

EARLY MORNING ANTICS

"What are we here for?" naively inquired the bellicose member for Wellington East (Mr. R. Semple) during the course of the highly elevating stonewall debate on the Saies Tax Bill which occupied the House until an early hour yesterday morning. After reviewing the verbal antics with which a number of honourable members (and Mr. Semple among them) beguiled the early morning hours, very many of the general taxpayers who are paying the piper for this entertainment, will ask the same question. It is encouraging* to find that in the early hours of the morning, members of the House are still able to indulge a somewhat heavy footed humdur but that is about the only encouraging thing about it. It is to be hoped that the country in general will

| derive the same amusement i! from the humour of the honourable gentlemen as they apparently derive from it themselves. Government members, apparently took very little part in the j debate with the exception iof | Rotorua's member who emerged from cover just in time to draw fire. The report does not disclose whether the remainder of Mr. Clinkard's colleagues were also in the retirement to which Mr. Semple so eharacteristically and courteously invited him to return, but in any case, it is immaterial. It is true that they were heard in occasional ejacula- ; tory chorusses, but even these ; failed to dampen the enthusiasm with which the Labour members 1 were conducting their conversazione. Mr. Clinkard was the only j one of the ranks of Tuscany who even endeavoured to raise a cheer, and it was possibly his untimely fate which discouraged other Government members from emerging from their seclusion. Seriously considered, however, the type of debate reported this morning is scarcely an elevating spectacle and at a time like the present when the country is crying for bread, it is even more irritating than dis-

eouragmg to be served with these verbal brickbats. Mr. Semple has raised the pertinent ques- . tion as to what the eountry's representatives are in Parliament for. In view of present and past performances, it is diflicult to say, but they are not there for the purpose of prolonging Parliament at three o'clock in the morning in order to hear themselves talk. The original suggestion made by the member. for Wellington Central that the chairman should leave the chair could well have been acted upon immediately and the country would then have been spared the spectacle of its representatives fiddling while Rome burned. The most valuable suggestion made during the debate was possibly that made by the member for Westland.