The Sun MONDAY, JUNE 25, 1928 THE FIDDLERS TUNE UP

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 389, 25 June 1928, Page 8

The Sun MONDAY, JUNE 25, 1928 THE FIDDLERS TUNE UP

THE political orchestra is preparing for the overture to the final session of the twenty-second Parliament. The fiddlers are tuning up and all the others with brass and wind-instruments, with drums and cymbals are hastening to their places, more eager than ever to make at least a great din. Since the fiddlers themselves call the tune the people who pay a big price for it can only hope that the entertainment will be worth the money. It has been announced by the Prime Minister that the opening soloists, so to speak, will he Mr. P. Waite, M.P. for Clutha and Mr. Allen Bell, Reform member for Bay of Islands. They are to initiate that formal and fatuous chorus known in parliamentary jargon as the Address-in-Reply debate which in all the past years throughout a decade merely lias been a pretentious: extravagance, a dull waste of time and public money. There is no reason, real or imaginary, for expecting anything better in the opening stages of this last session, of the present Parliament. Nothing that any member may say either about economic or industrial conditions in the country or about and against the Government can be anything different from everything that has been said already time and again concerning them. So why waste a couple of thousand pounds on formal nonsense 1 If members of Parliament desire to remove the reproach put upon them by the Auckland Council of Christian Congregations whose appreciation of a clergyman’s assertion that our present legislators" were second rate as to ability and less than second rate as to character showed that clerical opinion generally was similar—if Parliamentarians wish to raise their rating they will make short work of the Address-in-Reply debate and proceed quickly to real business and useful national service. It is to be hoped, too, that the Labour Party, as his Majesty’s Opposition in the House of Representatives, will not again pretend that it is promoting the interests of democracy by setting up a wraith of no-confidence in the government and chasing it, like a goblin, for many days and nights with yells and threats of slaughter. Who does not know now that Labour has no confidence at all in the Reform Administration, and who wants Labour to squander time, ability, and hard cash on stale argument about a thing well known? In a House of eighty members the Government musters over half-a-hundred and thus only requires to crack the party whip in order to smother a noconfidence motion. Parliament as a whole ought to realise that its record of work during its term so far, has been extraordinarily poor in almost every way. Spiritual, critics with the qualities of mercy and grace in their hearts do not gibe at politicians and call them second rate for nothing. Theirs is a common belief. To menbers of Parliament, more than to anyone else in the country is given opportunity to render splendid service. Indeed, politicians have the right to make their own opportunities for good work, But the people are sick-tired of seeing opportunity wasted in tedious repetition of pointless argument, trivial grievances, and party malice and manoeuvres. What-is wanted this session is practical legislation for the good of the Dominion. Unemployment is still rife in all the centres of population, and experience during the past year has proved tlmt temporary relief works at the expense of taxpayers and ratepayers is merely an irksome palliative, and not even the beginning of a cure. It is the plain duty of Parliament to wrestle with that problem and to throw it down beaten, rather than throw it aside as a task beyond the combined wisdom of more than a hundred legislators. And if the country’s industrial laws are to he amended to the desires of employers and workers alike; if that bone of contention, the Licensing Act, must be reboiled and gnawed by the electors this year, then Parliament should cut out all its cackle early in the session and get to the core of its legislative programme. These are but a few of the things Parliament should do and get them done well as a welcome change in its bad work.

MILESTONES A STUDENT of Maori affairs complains, in an, interview published in The Sun to-day, of the absence of a monument or monuments, to recall the exploits of the first Maori voyagers. He mentions, in particular, Kaihou-o-Kupe, now called Castleeliff, at Wanganui, where Kupe the first Maori navigator is said to have stepped ashore from his canoe. It may be regrettable that the spot is not marked, but there are pleasing features about the neglect. So long as no movement is set on foot we may rest comfortable o’ nights in the knowledge that no obelisk or cairn will be erected on the site. Wherever milestones in our history have to be commemorated it seems to be an unwritten law that the milestone must be interpreted, literally, in stone. At Waitangi, at Gisborne, in Marlborough, in Akaroa, picturesque incidents in New Zealand’s story are commemorated by obelisks. We have not attained that facility of expression which is giving countries of the Old World such striking memorials, and unless and until we arrive at that stage, or until we have a Minister of Pine Arts with the power to refuse permission for the construction of unsightly or inappropriate memorials, it is as well, perhaps, that we should call a halt to the indiscriminate erection of stone needles that are neither symbolic nor decorative.