LEGISLATIVE TANGLE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 466, 25 February 1933, Page 5

LEGISLATIVE TANGLE

AMENDMENTS BY COUNCIL HELD TO BE OUT OF ORDER ONLY RECQMMENDATIONS • ("Post" Special Commissioner.) Wellington, Friday. The Legislative Council has met with an unexpected checlc in its endeavour to amend the Small Farms Relief of Unemployment Bill through the discovery that it does not possess the power to amend the measure except in minor matters. The bill was reported back to the House of Representatives to-day, but the new clauses inserted by the council were all marked out by ruled lines across the pages of the bill. This is most unusual and it was actually done after the amendments had been made by the Upper House upon the Speaker, Sir Walter Carncross, discovering that in each instance State finance was involved and for that reason the Council had no authority to make the contemplated changes. One amendment 'approved hy the Council on Thursday provided that in the event of a mortgagor defaulting in the payment of interest the rent derived from the lease should be used towards the p'ayment of interest owing to mortgagee.

It was provided in another new clause that where the lessee has acquired the i'ee simple the purchase. money shall be applied in the repayment of the capital sums outstanding in respeet of mortgages. , A further clause provided that on acquisition hy the Crown by way of purchase of the land eomprised in any lease, or on the acquisition of the fee simple of the land by the lessee, and on payment of the priee, the land should he deemed to be released from all mortgages to which it may have been subject. The position now is that these proposed amendments have been sent to the House by the Council in the form of recommendations. It is understood that members of the Council are not sanguine about the prospeets of the amendments being ineorporated in the bill by the House. ■