The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1928. SANER HOURS FOR PARLIAMENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 538, 15 December 1928, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1928. SANER HOURS FOR PARLIAMENT

JtJOT satisfied with their effort to correct the grievances of the nation by raising the pay of members, nor with authorising an extra million or so of expenditure in that rapid, magical sort of fashion which so baffles the uninitiated, the Parliament which closed its first session yesterday is trying to reform the country by still another method, the regulation of the hours of the House, bringing them into conformity with rational business practice. Having begun all this, it can at least be regax-ded as a working Parliament. It has done more in a few days than many other Parliaments have done in months; and it is only regrettable that, of the first and third items in its programme, the third, though the more likely to find favour in the public eye, is a good deal the less likely to materialise. Efforts to put the Parliamentary time-table on a sane basis are no new thing. The trouble about such an instrument, a weapon of democracy forged even while democracy itself was in the making, is that the flaws inseparable from its slow process of evolution still remain. A remote group of ancestors, among whom the heroic figure of Simon de Montfort is discernible, first fashioned the legacy which their own, and intervening, generations have handed on. The intervening generations modified and moulded the legacy as-they saw fit. They made it an agent of extraordinary power-—impersonal, inscrutable, mysterious. The liberties of free speech are enshrined in the traditional British Parliament—and of such is the New Zealand assembly—as in no other institution in the world. Parliamentary privilege is absolute, the faithful guardian of the nation’s freedom.

Casual witnesses of Parliamentary proceedings are inclined to stop at the superficial side of it; hut around and beyond the discussion of the moment —frivolous, querulous, or fatuous as it may seem—hovers the spirit of Parliament. It cannot be dismissed as a figment. It is impalpable, invisible, yet strangely tangible. Its reality glimmers upon the perceptions in moments when some epochal debate is recalled; when Mr. Speaker, in wig and gown, delves into the dim past for a precedent; or when the Bar of the House is raised—that Bar at which people in high places have, knelt in humility before the might of Parliament. This is the weapon of democracy, the heritage of a free people. With all its great traditions, its spirit of service, it is a thing of many crudities and imperfections. It offers practically unlimited scope for the examination and dissection of any measure that comes before it. This is a latitude often misused, so that it becomes mere obstruction. But the long and irregular hours worked by Parliament aim to preserve this latitude, so that an objecting member may labour his objections time and again, and prolong the sitting in order to brifig his point under notice. So hajxpen the long sittings that seem so futile. They are really an expression of the liberties of the nation. But modern thought and modern methods would have devised a better system. The preservation of a sacred right should not depend on nocturnal heroics.

The way to avoid squabbles and waste of time over trifling questions is not to bring- them into the House at all. The committees should have more power. They should be able to deal finally with a multitude of minor questions, using the House only as a last court of appeal. A thorough re-casting of committee arrangements, and of the power of the committees as well, is the whole secret of Parliamentary reform. At present the committees sit in the mornings, and the House in the afternoons and evenings. It would be better to set apart a day or days for committee work, and leave the rest free, so that the House could sit in the mornings, starting at 10 a.m., and going on until 6 or 7 in the evenings, with later sittings only in special circumstances. This reform should be accompanied by a tightening up of the obligations of members toward committees. The present quorum is absurdly low—three or four to a committee of a dozen or twenty. Members who demand higher salaries should be prepared to work for them by sacrificing more of their leisure. Since much of this leisure is now spent in bed, especially when the overnight sitting has been late, it follows that the rational hours suggested would facilitate observance of the desired principle.

It is a problem for which remedies, suggested off-hand, do not always stand up to analysis or a practical test. But it seems a pity to lower the dignity of a noble Chamber by converting- it into a lounge and reading-room. Many other democracies have made their Parliaments work business hours. In Tasmania, for instance, the assembly never sits beyond a comparatively early hour. But there the selfless legislators even dispense with Hansard. No, we can’t follow. Tasmania.