PARLIAMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 March 1916, Page 5

PARLIAMENT.

EARLY SESSION VERY PROBABLE. (From Our Own Correspondent.) Wellington, March 10. The political prophets are agreed that there is going to be an early seesiou of Parliament, and they are even going so far as to fix the date when members will meet. The New Zealand Tiwes mentions April 20 tentatively, and the Evening Post names Thursday, April 27, almost confidently. Neither of these dates has any official sanction, but there seems to be very little doubt that Parliament will meet late in April or early in May, The date i« determined to some extent by the Treasury. The financial year closes on March 31, and some weeks must then elapse before the Minister for Finance be ready to meet Parliament.

One of the predictions made is that there will be a short session commencing in April, to be followed by a longer session later in the year. It is improbable that there will be more than one session. The work that lias to be undertaken in connection with war matters, pensions, finance, and one or two other matters is well defined, and the Ministers would have to show extraordinary urgency before they could persuade members to compress the first session into a period shorter than ten or twelve weeks at the very least. Then it is known that Mr. Massey and Sir Joseph Ward intend to visit London after the session, and they naturnilv will wish to have the ground clear here before they leave the Dominion. They will not be able safely to fix a date for their return, and they certainly will not wish the acting-Prime Minister to meet Parliament in their absence.