The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE. THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 1920. FUNCTIONS OF A MINISTRY.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3556, 19 August 1920, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 1920. FUNCTIONS OF A MINISTRY.

With which is incorporated “The Taihape Post and Waimarino News ”

The rights, usages and - privileges of Parliament have recently become such frequent subjects of disregard by the Prime Minister that criticism has almost ceased In connection therewith, and it is only when new invasions of Parliamentary right need special legislation passed by the House to give them some aspect of decency that public attention is called thereto. There ig nothing in constitutional government that needs more rigorously safeguarding than the rights and common usuages of Parliament, and it becomes a matter for general concern, if not actually of alarm, to have the Prime Minister wasting the time of the House by introducing measures asking Members! to make regular some irregular process, some function for which there is no precedent. This is all the more regrettable because the Premier sought to go outside the Ministry, and outside the House, to have a purely Miinsterial act performed. Mr Massey, in moving the second reading of his “Acts Interpretation Bill,” told the House the purpose of the Bill was to allow Sir William Fraser, a member of the Legislative Council, to sign legislation for the Hon. G. >T. Anderson during that Minister’s illness. The Premier had not limited the operation of the Bill to the one case for which it was ostensibly being introduced, and it was only when the Acting-Leader of' the Opposition drew attention to its general, permanent, and net particular nature that the Minister thought it advisable to set limits upon it synchronising with the probable period of the Hon. G. J. absence from the House. There are leaders of men who use the power given them so justly that it wins the confidence and trust of all sections of the people affected thereby, and there are leaders who strain that power so outrageously and impertinently that its yoke becomes notably irksome. Why a Measure should go all through the processes of legislation merely to empower a man not in the House to sign papers for a Minister of the Crown is past understanding, unless it is that Sir William Fraser is in reality the Minister, the power behind a dummy Minister to ensure the will of the secret power that frequently makes its presence obvious Tiebind the actual weilders of it being obeyed Parliament is so consistently adding to its accumulation of quasi-legisla-jtive bodies, or bodies: for the perfection of processes for legislation, that the constituencies scarcely know which is the really responsible one. It is nothing short of dissimulation to I suggest that, a Finance Committee composed of men who are not elected Members of the House to advise and instruct those who are, is anything more, than a means of furnishing the Government with that essential knowledge of finance which the party notably lacks. The extreme Labour section will be arguing that Reformers are coming round to Sovietism: that they are setting up a multiplied v 1

bodies, boards and .committees, to perform the functions for which “Sovietism has its Soviet Committees established in various parts of the country. We are of opinion that the Premier, perhaps unwittingly, is reaching back to the seventeenth century for the form of government obtaining then, with a view to instituting its chief features into a twentieth century Parliament. It was a one man Government in the days referred to. and the ucertainty of what was going to happen next had .become

so perplexing that a Member, Sir James Lowther, stated, “Nobody can know one day what a House of Commons would do the next; ’{ and history says that the whole House agreed with him. If Parliament can be induced to let Mr Massey run the country with the aid of a multiplicity of hoards and committees, an 3 his half-a-dozen private secretaries, a similar condition of government would doubtlessly result. It has been truly stated that every large body of hunmn beings, however well educated, has a strong tendency to become a mob, and it was realised that the Parliament of those days could become nothing [short of a mob, owing to the expediency of a one man government. The 'point we are in search of is here discovered; it is that government by Ministry came into existence to do the very work that Mr Massey is endeavouring to have relegated to men outside Parliament. ' A Ministry had no existence in Parliament in the reigns of the Plantagenets, Tudors or Stuarts, hut subsequetly became an institution, rapidly growing into importance until the present day, when they are, or should be, as essential la part of polity as Parliament itself. Then, as now, each Minister conducted the business of his own office without reference to other Ministers, and j It was only important questions that were matters for Cabinet discussion | and decision. The one-mais government was a failure in the seventeeth century, and just those things which contributed to its failure then, we submit, are all present to render a one-man government a failure to-day, despite the Premier’s expressed opinion about his ability to run the business of the country with the aid of half-a-dozen secretaries'. It seems beyond doubt, however, that if those important duties, which Ministers were brought into existence in the seventeenth century to perform, are going to be relegated to hoards and committees appointed by the Crown, and composed o of men not popularly elected to the parliamentary executive body, there is no further use for twentieth century Ministries, and they should be abolished, the money saved be devoted to paying the boards and committees which have not been elected by the constituencies. Every session of Parliament provides new additions to the increasing number of boards and committees, governing institutions,, or reputed aids to government. People are saying that a little country, with 'only a little over a million inhabitants, like New Zealand is being dangerously over-governed. The day of reaction will come, as it ever has come, but what form will a twentieth century reaction take? Despotism and power lust may go ou creating a greater goverrfmenf from non-elected sources, hut in whatsoever country it is rampant there is also a compensating and commensurate Bolshevik cult flourishing, despite the insincere spirit of bravado that will not admit it. There is a tendency amongst, new-found riches and sequential power-lust to make a break in the continuity of evolution to a perfect state, to ideal conditions of government, and it is producing a crop of resentment of 'an alarming character. Suddenly imposed war may have been a just excuse for suspending some small constltu/tiona.l matters, hut to go on playing with well-understood governing usages, and saddling Parliament with responsibility for frequpnt enactments merely to conform to the whims iof one man is playing with a tire that is fraught with as great a danger to the fingers of those who aFe opposed to such action, as to those who participate in it. It. is a waste of the time of Parliament, contributing nothing to | •the urgency there is for national, political, social and industrial reconstruction, which could and should he dispensed with.