Contestants “Off the Mat”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 437, 20 August 1928, Page 1

Contestants “Off the Mat”

Parliament and the Budget Weeks Wearisome Discussion. (THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter.) .1. « .1 * . WELLINGTON, Saturday. IF the Budget debate in its recent progress has proved 1 anything, it has proved the utter inability of the House as a whole to gTasp the complicated elements of national finance. The week s discussion has been wearisome beyond belief. Only rarely were members themselves galvanised into even a pretence of interest.

TT is an extraordinary commentary **■ that the one live issue raised in this parade of futile polemics was started by a Government member, Mr. 3. R. Hamilton (Awarua) who decided to blaze a little warpath on his own account. In doing so he set out chiefly to attack the railway construction policy. thu3 laying a train which has been followed with fiery enthusiasm by ethers who came after him. Yet, but for Mr. Hamilton’s outburst, which many felt revealed a lingering trace of southern hostility toward the progressive north, the interest of members plight never have been deflected to this concern.

The very minor extent to which the financial statement itself formed the Eubject of debate had to have some excuse, and it was found by even such exalted Reformers as the Hon. A. D. McLeod and Mr. J. A. Nash, in the argument that the budget debate was already worn threadbare. This was hardly the fact. The budget as a subject for contention is still hardly worn at all. The debate has been conducted over other fields. To use a wrestling term, the contestants have been mainly “off the mat.” From the Labour point of view this was easily explained. Apart from the Inability shared by nearly all members of the party rank and file, no matter what banner they acknowledge, to pierce the veil which conceals all large questions of finance from those not specially trained to deal with them, it was clear that criticism on general lines would sound much more impressive than a tedious detailed dissection of the Government’s financial principles. It would have been difficult, for instance, to imagine that unconquerable jester, Mr. J. A. Lee, who mixes his oft-times cutting humour with an engaging smile, pinned down to a searching examination of processions of figures. BUILDING A CABINET

Mr. Lee can usually be relied upon to command attention and hilarity was general when he observed that, heaven new', Mr. Coates had timber enough with which to build a cabinet. Modestly, Mr. Lee ascribed this quip to one of his colleagues. But others considered its origin even more remote.

What Mr. Lee did not show was whether the Prime Minister has at the moment any real occasion to do some “cabinet-making.” He has only one actual vacancy, that left by the death of Mr. Bollard. The other empty seats are those of the Hon. G. J. Anderson and the Hon. W. Nos worthy, both absent overseas, but both still members of the House. One or both, It is true, may be retiring, but until they actually do so the Prime Minister has no call to fill their places, and would be showing rank discourtesy if he were to do so. Still, speculation from the Labour angle upon the aspirations and emotions hidden within the rugged exterior of the Reformer is always a pleasant engagement, and not unprofitable if an appraising glance upward reveals that the figures in the press gallery are poised in a receptive attitude. Carried a degree or two

further, it takes the form of acid comment upon the difficulties of selecting Reform candidates wherever there are several offering. Mr. D. Jones (Ellesmere), has had to face some of this razor-edged banter in consequence of the Hon. W. Nosworthy’s vacillations over the mid-Canterbury seat; Mr. T. Forsyth (Wellington East), who seems likely to go to the poll against another Reformer, will probably hear about it next week; and Mr. W. A. Veiteh and others of the United party are regularly subjected to the same harrowing process, from which Labour itself is to a large extent immune because its party differences, if any, are invariably composed behind closed doors. JUST A QUORUM One returns to the Budget debate to find little left to say. Those who did seriously attempt to analyse the financial situation and policy were beguiled from their subjects by what were often the most irrelevant Interjections. Thus Mr. J. McCombs (Lyttelton) in whom the Prime Minister, no doubt, recognised a foeman worthy of his steel, for he was all attention while Mr. McCombs was speaking, was led away into an of economics, which he expounded most persuasively. On several occasions the debate was conducted in the presence of a bare quorum. Once Mr. D. G. Sullivan rose to point out that the required number was not present, but some fast work by the Reform Whip and a strategic halt on the part of the Prime Minister, who had been about to leave the chamber, resulted in the frustration of the amiable effort. Mr. V. H. Potter, last speaker of the week, gave Labour a taste of its own medicine. He fired whole volleys of rhetorical questions across the floor of the House, but though he won an approving “Quite right” from the Prime Minister, who thus signified that events of yesteryear have been forgotten, he got only enigmatic smiles from Mr. Holland and Mr. M. J. Savage, and nothing at all from Mr. J. A. Lee, who was at the moment fraternising with the Minister of Lands. Armed with a sheaf of notes, Mr. Coates had earlier in the evening seemed to be on the verge of taking part. However, he must have decided to withhold his contribution until next week. In the meantime he is to visit Wanganui.