The Daily News. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1912. CLIMBING DOWN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 124, 12 October 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1912. CLIMBING DOWN.

The one question that has been aimed at eandidates of the Reform Party at every election for the last twenty years has been as to whether, in the event of election, they would repeal existing legislation. On this point the Conservative Party waft always clear and unanimous. It would not, it sAid, interfere with the Statute Book, which presumably represented the will of the people, except in so far as the Public Revenues Act was concerned. That Act has been the bete noir of the ex-Opposition for many years. A Reform candidate might be embarrassed for a moment when he was challenged to name some of the Liberal measures he would remove from the Statute Book, but a glance at his notes would quickly reassure him, and he would reply, with gentle nonchalance, "The Public Revenues Act." Probably the candidate did not mean what he said, or, more probably still, did not understand his official reference. The repeal of the whole Act was never contemplated by its mentors. The particular clause to which the measure owed its adoption as an election cry provides that "the moneys available in respect of any vote in the Appropriation Act may be transferred in aid of any other vote in the same class." The fervor with which the Reformers attacked this clause of the Act has left its trail all over the pages of Hansard. Every district which was robbed of a transfer complained bitterly. But, anticipating ultimate victory at the polls, Mr. Massey and his lieutenants materially modified their language when an amending Act was passing through the House two years ago, though they were still emphatic in the condemnation of the clause. "After we have appropriated the money for some specific purpose," said Mr. Massey, "there is nothing to prevent the Government taking that money and spending it on some similar purpose, but in some other part of the Dominion. I say, when we have such a law as that, it certainly ought to be amended so that the will of Parliament shall be final." Mr. Allen was even morn emphatic in his condemnation. "I think," he said, "we are giving a great deal too much power to those who have the administering of the votes that are provided by Parliament to administer these votes. Very little of the vote provided for one railway has been used for that railway, and the main portion has been transferred for the purposes of another railway. So it is with roads, and so, I believe, it is with public buildings." Subsequently, Mr. Massey admitted that Sir Joseph Ward's Government was not responsible for the improprieties which Mr. Allen had alleged. "I am bound to say," he admitted, according to Hansard, "that, so far as I know, within the last | three or four years there has been no I abuse of this provision." This is a. happy tribute to the integrity of the late Government. But now comes the paint point. The present Government

'simply had to introduce an amending Bill, for the purpose of saving their faces and the faces of their supporters at the general elections, and what is the result? The amending measure has not altered one single word of the erstwhile obnoxious clause. It is to stand as it stands now. All that is proposed is to add a sub-section providing that particulars of any transfer from one vote to I another "shall he laid before Parliament I within ten days after the commencement of the session next after the expiration of the financial year." Of course, this does not affect the nature of the clause in the slightest degree or lessen the power of "those who have the administering of the votes," or the-opportunity to "manipulate" them. The amending Bill, in fact, shows the weakness of the Reform criticism of the Liberal administration, and is simply one more evidence of. the facb that Mr. Massey and his merry men have taken an exhaustive and successful course in the gentle art of "climbing down."