The Sun TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1927. A RECORD SESSION

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 220, 6 December 1927, Page 10

The Sun TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1927. A RECORD SESSION

A CLAIM has been made for the Parliamentary session which came to a welcome end last evening that it was a record one in a special way. There is no occasion for any false modesty about it. It was a record in every way, but an exceedingly bad record. For these and other reasons the long spell of arid debate and inferior legislative work certainly established a new record:— (1) A waste of time. (2) A waste of public money. (3) A waste of supreme opportunity. Moreover, the session was an unparalleled political experience in that it was marked by the poverty of constructive ideas and the lack of clean-cut, efficient legislative service. In shox-t, the second session of the twenty-second Parliament of New Zealand was a record for the little it achieved in real statesmanship, and for the mass of its mediocre w.ork. Without boasting, it is reported like a statistician’s enumeration, that the House sat on 105 days, or three days more than the previous record session in 1913, when the Reform Government, flushed with zeal, and eager to repair what it believed to have been the administrative ravages of Liberalism, set out to create a new political heaven and a new political earth. In the latest period of sitting no fewer than 141 Bills were put into the legislative nest, and of these 103 were hatched. The others were either broken or were proved to be addled. As for the large flock of legislative birds that gained a perch in the Statute Boole many of them, if not them all, will have to be brought back into the political yard next session to have their feathers trimmed or their scraggy necks wrung. There will be very few prize utility birds. Although it is impossible to locate anyone who is ready to praise the Government and Parliament for their woi’k throughout a grossly extravagant session, it will not be difficult to find many supporters of the Administi'ation quite willing to make plausible excuses for a miserable record. It has been urged, for example, probably with tongue in cheek, that the most vigorous ci-itics of the Government have not made adequate allowance for the difficulties of the period. That, manifestly, is a hollow excuse. No Government is deserving of special praise for its work when times are good. In such tranquil circumstances an obscure road board could run the business of the State with something like conspicuous success.. It is in bad times only that the intrinsic merits of the Administration lift the Legislature out of the rut of easy routine and lead politicians into the highways of statesmanship. This the exhausted Reform Government has failed to achieve. Its service has been rather less than mediocre; its policy has been lop-sided and irresolute. Hence the failure of its ambitious sessional programme. The worst of the country’s difficulties remain. There has been no solution of the unemployment problem and no real practical attempt to solve it. Taxation has been increased instead of being substantially decreased. State expenditure retains its profligate character, and the public debt has been distended like the body of a glutton. Vital social questions have been sidestepped or shelved with a cleverness that is merely political cunning. The Dominion, in short, is little, if anything, the better for its record session of Parliament. One thing, however, has been cleai-ly established. The politicians are not entitled to have their wages raised.

STRIKE OR PEACE?

LATEST advices from Australia indicate some hope for a settlement of what the employers call a strike and,the employees designate a lock-out. There is no doubt that the tactics of the watersiders, and also, to some degree, that of the seamen on the Australian coast have been very-irritating to shipowners for some time past; but as to whether that justifies the presumption that the men are defiant of law and intend to remain defiant is another question. There are two sides to every case. The men allege that they struck on overtime work as a protest against what they regarded as a conspiracy to delay Uieir claims being brought before the Federal Arbitration Court. They say further that the action of the employers in making such drastic reply to their protest as to lay steamers up and discharge their crews, thereby paralysing shipping and involving other industries —such as that of coalmining, which is absolutely dependent on shipping—is a deliberate lock-out. The employers have it otherwise,, and their attitude has been revealed by Mr. Justice Beeby who, after denying that the unions have been debarred from the Court, which “had been open to both parties since November,” said that the affidavits and evidence submitted to the Court raised a strong presumption that after a long hearing and the making of an award, the employees and the union did not intend to accept the Court’s decision. “Without the removal of that presumption, it was impossible for the Coxxrt to hear the union’s case.” That a Court of this ehai'acter has any proper right to act in this way and so risk a devastating strike merely upon a “presumption” of what employees are going to do, even if it is a “strong presumption,” is open to question. Mr. Justice Beeby talks about “the dignity of the Court,” but what dignity is there in a great strike with its attendant miseries? The Court would show a greater regard for dignity if it were great enough to subject its opinion that the men are “not preserving the dignity of the Court” to its primary duty of conciliation and get on wit'h its business of arbitration. Time enough to deal with the unions when the award for which they have been waiting has been made and it is found they do not obsei-ve it. Meanwhile, Mr. Crofts, secretary of the Austx-alian and New Zealand Council of Trades Unions, and the secretary of the V atex-side V orkers’ Federation, have given assurances for the observation of the existing award, including the woi’king of overtime, in the expectancy of the men’s case being heard. It is fortunate that the men’s representatives have shown so conciliatory a spirit; otherwise, Australia could easily be imagined entering into the throes of a long and very bitter strike, in which New Zealand would also suffer considerably. Even now it is reported that some shipowners are not altogether satisfied with the peace-establishing conference authorised by the Court’s approval, and state that it should only be held at the joint request of both parties. Is this more dignity, or the desire to humiliate—when the employees are found to be yielding ? The men seem to desire peace, and it is for the shipowners to meet them.