The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 1927. CAN YOU ANSWER THESE?

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 68, 11 June 1927, Page 10

The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 1927. CAN YOU ANSWER THESE?

ONE of the latest devices of an American literary journal for stimulating' interest in its contents is to present a number of questions under the challenging caption: “Can You Answer These?” Most of these are posers for the multitude. Y'hat, for example, is a “whangdoodle”? It is not (as most people might think) a Yankee term for political nonsense. That still remains flapdoodle. A whangdoodle is a creature allied to the gyascutus, and a gyascutus is really nothing at all. It was a mythical animal a showman pretended to possess, and the name “whangdoodle” drew the crowd to the menagerie. A simple trick. A similar method might be adopted in this country for the purpose of getting the best possible work out of its mediocre members of Parliament. Can you answer these? A thousand pertinent questions immediately arise for consideration. It is to be suspected that not all the answers would satisfy the public. But Heaven is merciful to politicians. They are tested only once every three years. Auckland members of Parliament are to confer with the Mayor and chairmen of the various municipal committees on the legislative needs of local government. The purpose of this conference, which is almost certain to take the form of a private talk, is so excellent in theory that it is to be regretted its practice will he limited generally to questions affecting municipal affairs. In all probability discussion will he confined to prospective legislation concerning motor-bus traffic control, loans for local bodies, and the usual Bills for amending defective laws for the government of cities and boroughs. On the politics of Bumbledom the Parliamentary delegates to the useful conference may be left to the guidance and inspiring counsel of our chief municipal administrators. One imagines that it would be a livelier occasion if the public were given a similar opportunity for a heartflo-heart talk with its numerically strong team of weak politicians. A bristling questionnaire would be hurled at them with an awakening briskness. Can our Parliamentary representatives answer these? Why is it necessary for charitable organisations to feed and clothe five hundred impoverished families in this beautiful city? Is anything to be done by Parliament this year to curb the disgraceful exploitation of tenants in slum dwellings? Will our local members of Parliament spur the Minister of Labour, who has been inspecting the dingy hovels in Auckland’s back streets and hidden lanes, to drastic legislative action against rent-profiteering by the callous owners of slums? What is to be done about finding useful work for over a thousand unemployed men and women in Greater Auckland? Why is it that the people of a province with close on thirty legislators in Parliament still must go cap in hand to the Government for aids to essential development? These are but a few of the questions the public would like answered satisfactorily by its representative statesmen and politicians. There is a wide, field yet to be explored: the cost of living, high taxation, high bank rates, the farcical system of State loans for housing, and the huge area of land that, because of lamentable neglect and lack of statesmanship, is rapidly reverting to wilderness. Can you answer these? Until our members of Parliament can answer these and other questions, they will he ranked with the whangdoodle.