WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3583, 20 September 1920, Page 5

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL

REVIEWING ITS CONSTITUTION

Special Correspondent.)

WELLINGTON, Sept. 17

The statement made by Sir Francis. Bell in the Upper House yesterday will relieve him and his colleagues in the Cabinet from the suspicion, which has been widespread in political circles here, that they were conspiring with the reactionaries in both Houses for the removal of the Legislative Council Act of 1914 from the Statue Book. Sir Francis made it quite clear that, be had no sympathy with Mr Gow's motion towards this end and presumably he spoke for his colleagues as well as for himself. He would not be a party, he said,-to legislation contrary to the principle of the Act of 1914, nor would he remain a member of a Ministry which would make such legislation a Government measure. In face of this emphatic declaration it is impossible to believe the Prime Minister is coquetting with the reactionaries. FAVOURABLE TO REPEAL.

There can be no doubt, however, that there is an element in the Council, numerically strong, which would be very glad to see the elective principle, so far as it threatens .their occupancy of their comfortable seats, consigned to the limbo of discredited and forgo ten things. It is safe to say thafthree-fourths of the members of the present Council would not have the slighest chance of being confirmed in their positions by any system of popular election. The devotion of these members to the nominated system is not necessarily due to a sordid desire to retain their seats against the will of the people. In some cases, at any rate, it is due to an honest conviction that the Government's prerogative of appointment is a desirable cog in the parliamentary machine, and that without it the country would be afflicted by a constant tumoil of legislative unrest. THE PROGRESSIVE VIEW.

Sir Francis Bell, however, is a safes* guide in matters of this kind than are the gentlemen who arc supporting Mr. Gow's motion for the repeal of the Legislative Council Act. Easily the most far-seeing member of the Cabinet he realises, as none of his' colleagues does, that much of the social and industrial unrest afflicting the Dominion at the present time is due to the sub-conscious sense pervading the whole community that its legislative institutions are not really representative of the mas? of the people. The Legislative Council, as one of the progressive members of that Chamber has put it, does vfot pretend to be representative of the popular -will, except so far as that will is represented by t'he head of the Government, who even if he enjoys the confidence of a majority of the electors to-day may be in a very different position before the term of his nominees expires. All this contributes to the growing dissatipfriftioT! wi h the existing ntato of affairs..

TALKING AT LAEGE. The iloose fashion in which some members of the Council' deal with matters of fact, which aught to b« well within their knowledge, was exemplified again during the course of yesterday's debate. Mr. Gow in moving his resolution said tlie operation of the Act he wished to have repealed had beenjsuspended at the instigation of

Sir Joseph Ward, implying that the late Liberal leader had been opposed to the elective principle ahcl to bo h these reforms, but objected to the' method in which*"lt was'proposed to introduce them. Then Sir William Hail-Jones, who might have been' expected to be more precise, argue/1 that i the Government's "increased majori Ity'.' at the polls of last December proved it had the confidence of the people. As a matter of fact, the Government was in a minority of 28,000 in the constituencies at the election of 1914 and in a minority of 129,000 at. the ejection of 19]9.