STRONG WORDS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 121, 12 August 1927, Page 1

STRONG WORDS

MR. SAMUEL WITH GLOVES OFF RACING OFFICIALS ATTACKED (THE SI X'S Parliamentary Reporter WELLINGTON. Thursday. THE ears of some members of the New Zealand Racing Conference must have burned uncomfortably to-night while Mr. A. M. Samuel, member for Ohinemuri, was speaking on the Waikato racing dispute. He had kept off personalities exceptionally well during his 80-minute speech, although he dealt severely with the Racing Conference as a body. In his enthusiasm to make his point, however, he mentioned two members of the conference personally.

“There are some men on the Rao ing Conference,” he said, “who are intemperate in their language. One is the secretary. I was not going to mention it. but I feel I have to, as there has been a reflection on this House. I was invited to a race meeting not far from here recently, and was told by the secretary of the conference that I said things in the House that no decent man would say.. This is a reflection on the conduct of this House. (Hear, hear.) I ask members who were not here to look up the Hansard records and see what I said. I have never made a statement here that would not be maue by any decent man. “There is another gentleman on the conference who will not do it any good by his language. He referred to my religion in the most disparaging terms. This sort of thing should not be tolerated in this House. (Hear, hear, from all sides). I say that this man’s religion, whatever it may be— Confucianism or Christianity—is not far below the surface. There is little charity in it, and if I meet him outside of this House face to face I will be of two minds whether to look him up and down and treat him with the utmost contempt, or to make a connection between my two fingers and his nose.” (Hear, hear, and laughter.) Mr. Samuel went on. amid laughter: “It would probably be the latter.” Mr. Samuel paid a tribute to the sportsmanship of Sir George Clifford, and regretted his illness. He (Mr, Samuel) had been told that he would be the voice as of one crying in the wilderness, but he said that voice crying in the wilderness would be heard by a higher authority than the Racing Conference. Mr. P. Fraser: Is that the Minister of Internal Affairs? Mr. Samuel: I did not think the hon. gentleman would be so sacrilegious as to make that suggestion. In defending his personal attitude on the question in the House, Mr. Samuel said that proprietary racing clubs had power to debar him from attendance on the racecourses if they so desired on account of the attitude he had adopted in this question. “I am as good a sport as anyone else who claims to be a sport and interested in racing,” he declared. “I have raced horses, to my sorrow', and hunted horses, to my pleasure, and I have derived more pleasure from hunting them than from racing them. Personally I do not care if I never see a racecourse again.”