WELLINGTON TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, 21 August 1920, Page 5

WELLINGTON TOPICS

A GOVERNMENT REBUFF. THE INDEPENDENT ELEMENT. (Special Correspondent.) Wellington, August 18. In its attempt yesterday to induce the House to accept the amendments made by the Legislative Council in the Gamisg Amendment Bill the Government suffered its first rebuff of the session. It was not a very serious matter —not <one imperilling Mr. Massey's occupancy of the Treasury Benches, nor even weakening his hold upon his faithful majority —but it showed that the spirit of independence abroad in the new Parliament is able to express itself on occasions with some effect. The Council, it will bo remembered, had added to thg Bill clauses making :tlxe telegraphing of investments to the totalisator and the publication of tho amount of the dividends legal and in the absence 0i the Minister of Internal Affairs, who has not yet fully recovered from his reseat illness, his locum tenans, Sir William Herries, proposed the new clauses should be accepted by the House.

MINISTERS PROPOSALS DEFEATED. There is reason to' suspect that the Hon. G. J. Anderson himself was not particularly well disposed towards the amendments and that if he had been in the House when their acceptance was proposed he would have made it quite clear their adoption was not to be regarded as a party question. But Sir William Herries, obviously with the concurrence of Mr. Massiy, left no doubt about a majority of the Cabinet being in agreement with the Legislative Council and desiring the support of its friends in the House in the matter. But when the division was taken, the two clauses just mentioned being the main points at issue, there was found to be a majority of six against the Council's view, the voting being thirty to twenty- j four. i

PARTY DIVISIONS. An examination of the division list shows that while the Labor ipewbers and the recognised Independents voted unanimously against the Council's amendments, the members of the old parties were rather strangely divided. Among the Liberals Messrs. Edie, Hanan, Horn, Isitt, Ngata, Scddon and Sidey voted against the amendments, and Messrs. Atmore, Forbes, McCallum, Poland, B. W. Smith and Wilford for them. .Among the Reformers, Messrs. J. M. Dickson, J. E. Hamilton, Luke, Malcolm, E. Newman, Stewart Sykes and Wright we.jj against* them, and Messrs. Bollard, Coatcs, Field, Glenn, Guthrie, Henare, Hockley, Lysnar, McLeod, Massey, Nash, Xosworihy, Parr, Pomare, Reed, Rhodes. Sir William Herries and Sir R. Heaton Rhodeß for them. Mr. Anderson was the only Minister absent and the whole of his colleagues voted for the acceptance of the Council's amendments, demonstratisg plainly enough what they would have had their supporters do. ABSENT MEMBERS.

The fact that there were twenty-one members absent from the House at the time of the division, not counting the Hon. A. M. Myers, who, of course, is away from the country just now, was a matter of vtvy general comment in the galleries. A majority of the absentees, had been counted as supporters of the Council's amendments, so quite probably the character of the Bill was moulded, not so much by the members who voted as by those who stopped away. The new House is rapidly earning ft not very creditable reputation in this respect. An unusually large number of members are extremely irregular in their attendance and frequently important business has been transacted with scarcely more than a bare quorum in the Chamber. Committee work is usually the excuse for this sort of thing, but it can deceive only people who are unacquainted with thu requirements of the House.