Hostilities Renewed

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 455, 10 September 1928, Page 13

Hostilities Renewed

CHANGING MOODS IN HOUSE Committee’s Powers Defined (TUH SUN'S Parliamentary Reporter) AY ELL IN G T ON, Saturday. PARTY hostilities, dormant since the- duel between Mr. J. A. Lee and the Minister of Lands, were renewed vigorously on Friday afternoon, in the House of Representatives, when the presentation of an apparently innocuous statement led to a brisk argument, culminating in a scene rarely paralleled in recent years. Yet, such are the changing moods of Parliament, the House later in the day settled down into a placid and almost somnolent discussion of estimates.

'p'Oß a few minutes toward the close -*• of this breezy Interlude the House seemed completely out of hand, and tranquility was only restored by the arrival of the dinner adjournment. Language which had a distinctly unparliamentary flavour was hurled across the floor of the House, as when the Prime Minister said Mr. Holland had made himself a mere “bag" of hot air,” and Mr. V. H. Potter advanced with a note of pride the claim that he, as a certificated miner, was something more than a “mere underground navvy.”

The subject of all this fierce argument was a report presented by the Prime Minister on a recent industrial dispute at the Cascade mine, near Westport. Unable to understand the introduction of a question settled weeks ago, Labour members bitterly reproached the Prime Minister with electioneering, and it must be admitted that, though he claimed to have produced the report at the behest of a large number of the co-ojjerative miners affected, the Prime Minister did not in the short time at his disposal make a very satisfactory answer to the charge. Theer were many other ways in which the Prime Minister, without introducing it in the House, could have defined the Government’s attitude, and mystified observers, wise in the knowledge that divisions of political thought have lately become rather blurred, were compelled to assume that he introduced the report with full knowledge of the reception it would be given. A MEMBER WARNED Of the side-issue to this debate, the Speaker’s threat to “name” Mr. V. H. Potter if he persisted in making what the Speaker termed “disorderly interjections,” was the most interesting. Though a former Auckland Labour member used to accept with equanimity, if not actual gratification, the minor indignity of being named fairly regularly, it is rare in these days of colourless polities for this tangible intimation of the Speaker’s displeasure to be inflielied. When made a member retires from the chamber while the House decides upon his punishment, which is usually suspension for the sitting. In the case of Mr. Potter, who at the moment was interrupting Mr. H. E. Holland with considerable fervour, no more than a warning was thought necessary.

But for the high lights of Friday afternoon, the House during the week pursued the even tenor of its way with very little serious interruption. Material progress with the programme of the session was marked by the advancement of a number of measures to their final stages, and the disposal on Thursday of a large group of local Bills of importance to the localities affected. PRINCIPLES OF LEGISLATION It was while these measures were going through that a hold-up occurred on the Christchurch Tramways Amendment Bill, into which the Local Bills Committee, which reviews all local legislation as soon as it is introduced into the House, had inserted a clause wholly different in principle from anything in the original Bill. Strong objection was taken to this by Mr. D. Jones (Ellesmere), who finally, after a study of the Standing Orders, raised a novel point of order by asking if the committee, prompted of course by the promoters of the Bill, had not exceeded its powers.

In a reasoned and impressive reply, Mr. Speaker stated that, while he had no precedent to guide him on this altogether unusual point, he felt that the functions of the committee should not permit the interpolation of new principles which those affected by the legislation had been given no opportunity of examining. Subsequently the

Bill was passed with the offending clause deleted. Early in the week the passage of the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Bill gave Mr. B. P. Lee and his small following of objectors another opportunity to explain their antipathy to its clauses, and the Labour members another opportunity to enjoy the unusual experience of supporting a contentious Government measure. Presentation of reports and papers of varying consequences occupied a good deal of the week, and allowed Sir Maui Pomare to exercise a somewhat peculiar sense of humour at the expense of a number of genuinely interested inquirers. The session is now in its eleventh week, and the local Summer-time re-' port and the Licensing Bill, both highly contentious, have not yet shown up. Both are expected early in the week, the latter after many “false alarms.” In addition there is likely in the near future to be some sort of an echo of Friday’s pleasantries, while each side is saving up some of the other’s indiscretions with which to enliven the closing stages of the session.