The Daily News. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1912. THE GOVERNMENT'S PROGRAMME.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 129, 18 October 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1912. THE GOVERNMENT'S PROGRAMME.

The programme of legislation outlined by Mr. Massey in the House on Tuesday afternoon as a suitable one for ten days' work is simply appalling, and it is little wonder that those who have had more experience of the shifts and shoals of administration than the present Prime Minister has had should have sat aghast. There was a time when Mr. Massey and his colleagues, when in the outer darkness of Opposition, would have decried such a suggestion as he now puts forward with the loud voice of virtuous indignation from every public platform in the country. He has, in his official capacity, continually railed, with the voice of one crying in the wilderness, against such helter-skelter legislation as he is now proposing, and lias protested with all the aggressive simplicity of sweet sixteen against such a naughty habit as keeping late hours. But circumstances proverbially alter cases, and having undertaken to do certain things in a certain time he nows finds it necessary, if he is to "make good," to drive the Government coach at excessive speed. As an administrator he has made the initial mistake, to use the crisp American vernacular, of "biting oft more than he can chew," and he is now, as a eonsequence, faced with the prospect of almost certain political indigestion. He has outlined enough work for the next ten days to occupy the House for as many weeks, and even his sanguine temperament can hardly lead him to be optimistic enough to imagine that it can be properly dealt with in the allotted time. If the Prime Minister's programme is an attempt to justify his platform by turning promises into performance it will fail in its object. The country is in no desperate hurry for some of the measures he has outlined and was quite prepared to give him, in his first year of office, a "run for his money," and to discount his promissory legislation note at a very small rate of interest until such time as he has been able to grasp some of the elementary details of administration. Every ship, as Kipling has put it, must of necessity ha

given time to "find itself," but in hi* haste to justify liis haphazard acquisition of office Mr. Massey bids fair to loso himself. If he should succeed in putting his programme through in the specified time it will only be at the expenss of a sacrifice of principles that he has ardently supported from the Opposition benches | for the last decade.