The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND THURSDAY, AUGUST 7. 1030 A WASTE OF MONEY

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1044, 7 August 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND THURSDAY, AUGUST 7. 1030 A WASTE OF MONEY

PARLIAMENT is spending at the rate of £.100,000 a year on itself and the practice of so-called national politics. Can anyone outside the halls of harangue even pretend that the country is receiving anything like value for its money? There should be no pretence about it. The Legislature these days is providing an extremely had example of extravagance. Instead of giving a depressed country an encouraging lead m constructive economy, which happens to be the Dominion’s most vital need today, representative politicians deliberately, for party purposes, are squandering time and wealth. So far this session their work has been incomparably inferior. A full record ol the business done within the past live weeks could be tabulated on a postage stamp which, if sold at a penny, would be dear at ihe price. \et the official record of the little that has been accomplished and all that may be done in a hurry after members of the House of Representatives have exhausted their loquacity will cost the taxpayers the sum of £13,000 for payment of “Hansard” alone. And how many people throughout the country will fray their patience and spoil their temper by reading so arid a political story?

There must be something demoralising in the atmosphere of Parliament. The position is not a case of lions being led by asses or the opposite. If any overburdened taxpayer were to challenge any individual legislator on the necessity of Parliamentary economy the response would not only be satisfactory, but would suggest that politicians are really not stupid after all. Each member of the House knows well enough that his first and greatest duty this session is to work honestly and hard in order to get legislative things well done. Each party separately would reveal the same knowledge and intention to make the session a notable one for useful legislation and good administration. But taken together and judged on collective work individuals and parties merely have Succeeded thus far in making Parliament as a whole stand out too clearly as the Dominion’s most extravagant failure in national service.

How long is the present foolish business to go on? The Budget debate, in which the standard of argument has not been worthy of applause, has been in spate for over a Parliamentary week. It has cost the public n)>t less than £5,000 —a sum which would have provided much more profitable work for the unemployed and the State. More than thirty speeches have gushed into “Hansard” for the odd benefit of some seven hundred subscribers who apparently take their leisured pleasure sadly. Less than"half a dozen of the speakers have been worth hearing and the high expenditure on the recording of their political wisdom. The others merely have indulged tediously in vain repetition. Some prominence has been given to a comic element in the long harangue and also to the efforts several eritics in the House have made to give the Forbes Budget its true colour and character. in turn the heavy document has been dubbed a “Black Budget” and a “Rainbow Budget,” the latter title being an inspiration of the inspired Minister of Health, the lion. A. J. Stallworthy. The only appellation it deserves is a Bad Budget, so bad indeed that responsible members of Parliament should make an end to their vapid talk and concentrate on modifying thq Government’s vicious financial proposals. This is not the time for political nonsense. The plain duty of the Legislature is to keep the Government from inflicting an inflated burden of taxation upon all the people. High taxes cannot fail to depress trade and industry and shackle enterprise. It has not been demonstrated by the Government that the injurious scale of its achieved and proposed taxation has been or will be necessary. The aim of the Budget is a party purpose. -V big surplus is sought for electioneering service. The projected increased taxation could be cut down by nearly half without imperilling either the country’s credit abroad or its resources at home. In the meantime, instead of hastening toward the financial Bills with a slasher in every Reform and Labour hand, all parties waste public money on wrangling talk. There appears to he need of a ruthless dictator or. if one be not in sight, a wise Council of State.

THE CENSORSHIP OF FILMS SO important is the part played by motion pictures in the life of the community today that the time lias come for either a consolidation of the Government Film Censor’s position or a revision of the present system. This is made plain by the existing dissatisfaction over recent censorship rulings—-dissatisfaction which has spread to members of Parliament who have voiced haphazard opinions in the House with the air of accredited critics. Such a state of affairs is satisfactory to no one, least of all to Mr. W. A. Tanner, who is now facing censure .from administrators whose predecessors devised the methods he follows in performing his task. If members of Parliament (a number of whom appear to have developed a habit of spending leisure or, perhaps, working hours in cinemas) believe that the censorship of films in New Zealand is not being conducted on sound and reasonable lines, their duty is obvious, they must find a way of bettering the system they have created. Occasional protests against isolated decisions do not, remedy matters; on the contrary, they tend to create public unrest and the feeling that the regular amusement of tens of thousands of New Zealanders is being controlled on arbitrary and illogical lines. There is much to he said in favour of a wise and discriminating censorship and motion picture exhibitors, as a whole, are fully in sympathy with official control, for they realise that the maintenance of a clean, wholesome standard is essential to the well-being of their business, particularly in an age when the cinema has become the principal amusement of a very large proportion of the country’s population. Moreover it has been proved time and again that the public prefers clean motion pictures; that an exhibitor who thinks otherwise ultimately loses the family patronage that means everything to his business. In past years the censor has been successful in raising film standards considerably.

Unfortunately, in all cases in which discretionary powers are vested in an individual, it follows that they must be exercised on a basis of opinion. Mr. Tanner would be super-human if invariably he saw eye-to-eye with the wise majority, and the most that can be expected by the public on whose behalf he is employed, is that his general supervision shall be for the good of picturegoers, yet not erring on the side of intolerance. At present the censor’s decision may be upset by the Appeal Board, and if the growth of the industry has made it impossible for one man to hold an impartial balance between the methods of film-makers and the views of the public, serious consideration should be given to the question of reorganising the office and appointing the board in a full-time capacity. Incidentally it should be recognised that films are no longer catering for a class. Modern censorship should he placed on a broad basis with proper regard for full community requirements.