The Daily News. SATURDAY, APRIL 6, 1912. A PAINFUL PERSON.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 238, 6 April 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, APRIL 6, 1912. A PAINFUL PERSON.

Mr. John Payne, the picturesque member for Grey Lynn, is evidently qualifying for a star acrobatic turn in the political circus. Hie platform is as shifting as the sands of the desert, and quite as unstable. To quote the crisp vernacular of a once-popular topical song, it really seems as if "lie dunno where 'e are," and the confused card-pricker in the House is sorrowfully reduced to cataloguing iim as a tive-Progressive-Socialist-Reform-Opposi-tionist member. And he fills the bill, for it is a long while since Parliament has seen a man. of so many political parts and political principles. Perhaps he is like a singed cat—'better than he looks; but in the meantime his brief career as a representative of the people has been singularly kaleidoscopic. Possiily the little brief authority in which he is dressed lias obscured his judgment, but we should hate to regard his attitude as typical of that of a sane and responsible Labor Party. Apparently his estimate of his duty is to "get offilce—properly if he can, but get office," and to attain this object he is prepared to sacrifice every shred of political conscience and to shed every rag of political decency. In his own estimation he is Parliament, and he is prepared to hold the scales of Justice with a beautiful impartiality to both parties, so long as the heavy en'd comes his way. There are, of course, plenty of naughty, unkind people who would characterise his particular attitude as "rail-sitting." But, Mr. Payne is not a raiL-sitter. We know he is not, for he has told us so himself. Instead, he is one of those rare individuals who stand alone, one of those noble, high-spirited fellows who always go into battle singing, right behind the army, and always come out a-whooping right alread of it. If a thing wants regulating, Mr. Payne apparently is not the sort of man to go browsing around after somebody to do it; he simply prances in and regulates it himself. Unfortunately, he has not the gift of seeing himself as others see him, or his magnificent exuberance might speedily be modified. In the meantime, in his effort to serve both the god of political purity and the mammon of office he looks like committing political suicide. It is admitted that in the present state of politics the small Lalbor Party in the House is blessed with an importance far beyond its proper numerical proportion, but, even allowing for this, it is difficult to conceive Mr. Payne as being a typical representative of the average working man. A person who is prepared to become anything from a Mohammedan to a Hairy Ainu, is too much of a universal hedonist to ever make a permanent

mark in politics, and it is only Mr. Payne's frankness in running amok that makes him interesting. Already his constituents have expressed their emphatic disapproval of his attitude, and whilst, for matters of temporary expediency, his vote may be angled for "by tlu- leaders of both parties, his meteoric career will never stand a second appeal to the people. A spendthrift in promises and a miser in performances, he will undoubtedly sell his life dearly.