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Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 194, 14 February 1912, Page 4

THE POLITICIANS. , Some papers and the Hon. T. Mackenzie have been discussing politicians, and the Minister has said that it is not the thistle and the rabbits that are the nuisance, but the politicians. Although Mr. Mackenzie is a politician, we must, of course, in courtesy except him from his own accusation. On any number of , occasions wc have seized the opportunity to remark that although there are many capable persons in the New Zealand House of Representatives, the majority of them simply apply their talents to trivial and minor affairs, and are glorified bagmen or local agents, Politicians may work very hard in New Zealand, but there is always a supposition that they are performing their little part in order that the section of .the public nearest to them may not disregard their claims when the country is rent with an election. Constructive and nationally useful politicians are quite uncommon. Carefully imitative politicians who can depend to do splendid phonographic work are the rule, and it is not their fault. An electorate looks to its own tame politician to perform the little chores the public sets him to do, depending on the performance of minor offices for the support he gets. Because of the party system he is in nearly all cases a mere echo on matters of national importance. He must carefully regulate his verbal output to the needs of the next election. "What did he get for us?" is the general test. On the one side of the ledger is set the politician. On the other side the yards of metal. If he is expert in forcing the Treasury to ooze, he is doing all that is demanded of him. In the weary desert of Hansard there are iepv oases, not because the ordinarily intelligent men Who contribute to its precious bulk couldn't plant date palms if they wanted to, but because they dare not, are not encouraged to, and never will be encouraged to while the party (any party) waves the sceptre. The importance attached to the merest verbal vapidities hurled at the press by newly-fledged politicians spurs them to a continual flow of platitudes. Most of them might easily rake up something to say that had a "spark about it, but their positions as local agents and travelling bagmen make it fatal for them to express new thoughts, new ideas, or. to have any constructiveness. The politician has to walk warily, for he might lose a vote any moment. He has been broken in by the insistence on application to small things, and if he is a nuisance, as Mr. Mackenzie savs he is, he is morel to be pitied than blamed.