“WORST IN HISTORY”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 422, 2 August 1928, Page 1

“WORST IN HISTORY”

USE OF ORDERS-IN-COUNCIL

LABOUR LEADER’S PROTEST

(THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, W'ednesday.

“Parliament should be supreme. Instead, we have to-day the anomaly of a Parliament that passes legislation, and then hands to the Government authority to over-ride that legislation by Orders-in-Council.” Thus the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. IT. E. Holland, to-day renewed his protest, uttered often last session, against what he has termed the system of governing by Orders-in-Council. The Prime Minister said these protests had been heard for 50 years. They were nothing new. Mr. Holland: The Prime Minister will readily admit that if a Labour Government were making use of this power to the extent that his Government is doing, he would be the first to make a vigorous protest. I challenge the Prim© Minister to attempt to justify the principle by which a Government has power to override statutory law. Mr. G. W. Forbes, Leader of the Liberal-Nationalist section, joined with Mr. Holland in his protest, and recalled that the late Mr. Massey had strongly objected to legislation by means of Orders-in-Council. If the Government were allowed to go on unchecked, its tendency to employ these. methods would grow. Mr. P. Fraser: It can’t grow much more. Mr. Forbes: It is the worst in the history of Parliament.