TEEING A MEMBER'S HANDS.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 October 1918, Page 4

TEEING A MEMBER'S HANDS.

The platform of the Lalior Party includes an adherence to the initiative, referendum, and recall. At New Plymouth on Monday evening Mr. Smith expressed his approval of the plank, which is borrowed from Switzerland, where it obtains to a more or less degree, but New Zealand is not Switzerland, and what suffices for the Swiss will not, we are sure, satisfy New Zealanders. No man with any independence and conviction would ever offer his services to the electors if complete trust were not reposed in him. If he were not capable of voting on any question or assisting to initiate legislation he ought not to be in the House. The recall means that a member can be recalled at the instance of a given proportion of voters and asked to face the electors. This is quite unnecessary with triennial parliaments. If a member proves false to his pledges or unfit to properly represent his constituents the remedy is simple—he can be put out by the electors at the next election. Government by referendum, by the initiative, with the power of recall, would prove in actual practice a burlesque. Extreme Laborites like the idea mainly because it would give them the opportunity of exercising power over a nominee on his becoming too independent or too tolerant. In other words, he might become so broadened by associating with others in Parliament as to realise there are other view-points besides Labor's, and that it would be his duty to legislate for the whole and not for one particular class. This possibility the despotic Labor agitator dislikes very intensely. He believes in the caucus and in keeping a tight hold ovef his representative, whose powers lie would limit to the mere registering of the will of the caucus. Effective Government under these conditions would be impossible. To the unthinking the plank seems democratic, but it is not; it is a delusion, and would render impossible any good government. It would keep out of politics the very men we want there—the brightest and best brains we have, the men of initiative, resolution, and character. We must admit surprise that Mr. Smith, who went out of his way —quite unnecessarily, in our view—to say that he was "standing not in the interests of Labor organisations, but of tlie people as a whole," should give such an impracticable and dangerous proposal the slightest hearing.