Half-Hour Summer Time Plan Shelved

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 458, 13 September 1928, Page 16

Half-Hour Summer Time Plan Shelved

MR. SIDEY’S DECISION NOT ASKING FOR BILL (THE SUN'S Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, To-day. The announcement of his intention not to proceed with his Local Summer Time Bill was made by Mr. T. K. Sidey in an interview yesterday. Mr. Sidey does not intend to go to the length of having the Bill removed from the Order Paper of the House of Representatives, but he has decided, in view of the latest developments, that he cannot ask the Government to provide opportunity for bringing the measure before the House again. Though the committee which reported adversely oii the Bill propounded an alternative proposition of half an hour national summer time, the adoption of the compromise is in the hands of the Government. In the view of the Government it would presumably be undesirable to resurrect the national summer-time proposition involved in the suggested compromise. Even if the Government was satisfied that summer-time may be a vital election issue, it might also assume that the only support to be gained by adoption of the compromise would be in crowded urban areas, in many of which the predominantly Labour allegiance could not be broken by any belated favours. These considerations, at any rate, would naturally be weighed.

Since Mr. Sidey’s original Bill was defeated earlier in the session there has been signs of some weakening of the anti-summer-time opinion, and several former opponents, such as Mr. H. M. Campbell, Mr. W. S. Glenn and Mr. J R. Hamilton indicated on Tuesday night that they would be prepared to support the half-hour proposition. Others, again, showed the same old reluctance to accept anything in the nature of a compromise. Mr. F. F. Hockly, rather surprisingly, was one of these. However, the general inference from Tuesday's debate is that the compromise, if it had been given an opportunity before the House, would have had an excellent chance of succeeding, and thus of giving the people half an hour of summer time each day this summer between October 16 and the second week in March.