SYSTEM ABUSED

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 636, 14 September 1933, Page 3

SYSTEM ABUSED

washing-up bills LEGISLATION CARELESSLY AND HURRIEDLY PREPARED. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE YIEW. Over a period. of years Parliament has, in many instances, enacted legislation hurriedly and carelessly (says a statement by the Associated Chambers of Commerce). The incognito of "Finance Act" (or "Washing-up Act) has for long covered an extraordinary mass of diversified legislation,' which has been rushed through in the dying hours of the session without the matters heing given that careful consideration which their importance demands at the hands of the legislature. The coming session of Parliament might well mark a reform in this connection. Overriding the Law. From thcir title, one would assume that the Finance Acts 1 dealt with purely finance matters, but it is found that amendments to general statute law made under them have been very great and cover almost every Act upon the Statute Book. In the hundreds of sections that have been passed in the "Washing-up" Acts since 1915, many principles of the common law have been over-ridden, and many provisions of our general statute law have been set at naught. This procedure, originally in the early days of the war purely as an emergency method of legislating, has been not only abused, but most grossly abused, ever since, and has now reached such dimensions as to amount to a public scandal. Research' has shown that since 1915 28 Finance Acts, with' 1383 sections, have been passed. In 1915 Parliament contented itself with one Finance Act. In 1931 it passed four separate Finance Acts, this time containing, in all, 163 separate sections. A single Finance Act may repeal or amend the provisions of some 30 or 40 different public Acts. These bills are introduced nearly always in the dying hours of the session, generally without any adequate explanatory memorandum, and there is frequently little guide in the bills themselves as to the nature of the different amendments. Frequently all that appears is a clause providing simply that such' and such a section of such and such an Act is repealed. To understand the amendment one must take down the Statute Book containing the Act which it is intended to repe al. When one single Finance Act deals with some thirty different Acts in this manner, not only does it become a sheer impossibility for the general public to follow what is being done, but it becomes impracticable for the ' different amendments to be understood by the great majority of the individual members of Parliament. Is ' it to be supposed that members are going to pull down and look up some thirty different Acts in order to find out just what particular amendments are being made in this fashion? New Powers Cranted. .Other equally objectionable "Wash-ing-up" Acts g~o under the names of Local Legislation Acts and Reserves and other Lands Disposal Acts, the practice now being to pass one of each name each session. A single one of these Acts may sometimcs contain close on 200 clauses, frequently more than 100 clauses, and it seldom contains less than 20 or 30. In many instances illegal acts by public bodies have been validated, powers have been granted to public bodies which they did not possess under the general statute law, authorities have been given to raise loans without a poll, and to validate loans which should never have been raised. Measures designed to limit the powers of local bodies, namely, the Local Bodies Finance Act, Local Bodies Loan Act, the Local Government Loans Board Act and the Electric Power Boards Act — have been set aside in a surprising manner. The result is careless law-making, an obscuring of the law, and the hasty setting at naught of well-considered legislation designed to make local bodies live within their means.