WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 September 1921, Page 12

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

THE NEW PARTY PROGRESSIVE AND MODERATE. (Special Correspondent.), The Progressive Liberal and Moderate Labor Party made its first public appearance here on Wednesday evening, when it had a distinctly friendly reception from an audience of between 1300 and 1500 people in the Town Hall. Mr. C. E. Statham, the leader of the party, undertook the enunciation of the new evangel anti on the whole acquitted himself very well. He is too diffident and too judicially minded to fill the popular conception of a party leader, but he is ready, observant, and in deadly earnest. Hi.? I programme is very much the programme j of the Left Wing that attempted to speed up the policy of the Liberal Party in the earlier years of Mr. Seddon’s long reign, and so far is a reminder that many of the ideals of the Progressives of those days remain to be realised. In this connection it is interesting to recall that the great Liberal leader, he could not see eye to eye with the late Air. T. E. Taylor on the questions of a State Bank and universal pensions, did not place these proposals beyond the , sphere of practical politics.

OLD FRIENDS. Most of the other planks in Mr. Statham’s platform also are old friends. It seems that the new party leader is not imagining that the adoption - of the elective evecutive would result in all shades of political and party color being represented in the Cabinet. Here he is wiser than some of his predecessors movement. The reform merely Won id make the rank and file of the dominant party a little less subservient to th.'ir leader than they are ai present. One of the soundest of Mr. proposals in the estimation of folk Who have travelled far towards the democratic ideals of •government by the people for the people” is the substitution of a revising body of’experts for the LegislativeCouncil. This is a reform which Mr. Massey, with his ready wit in such ma ters, might consistently apjuoprigte fn " his critics when he finally jnttiflons the suspended Act providing for the election of the Upper House. It would be a stroke of genius that might prolong his occupancy of office for a decade. " Air. Statham’s denunciation of the extreme Labor Party was one of the most eloquent passages in his address, and one of the most acceptable to his audience. DEFALCATIONS. The somewhat halting excuses offered by the Public Service Commissioner’s office for the frequency of defalcations in State Departments is not going to satisfy observant people that all is well with the country’s system of book-keeping and its supervision. The subject has been mentioned once or twice in these columns lately, and now the Dominion, a journal that would see all that is fair in the administrative garden, is moved to pointed protest. “If inquiries have been held and no one has been found to blame, it says, “it must have long ago become evident that the book-keeping and accountancy system was glaringly inefficient. On the other hand, if inquiries were held and controlling officers were found blameable, what steps were taken to enforce a greater vigilance?” In the recent Christchurch case "where a mere lad was able to abstract some £2OOO odd from a eash register during the course of a year, the youngster seems to have had the master key as well as the ordinary key, a |d thus‘been able to carry on his operations at his leisure. And now the Assistant Commissioner is being despatched to Christchurch to ascertain how he did it!

FARMERS’ BIG UNION. A conference representative of the Council of Agriculture, Farmers’ Union. Sheepowners’ Federation, and Board of Agriculture, was held here on Wednesday for the purpose of forming a National Council to watch over the interests of the farmers. Mr. G. L. Marshall, the chairman of the Council of Agriculture, briefly outlined the views of" the promoters of the conference. “We farmers,” he said, “are at present suffering from disunion, and we must get the foundation of some constitution which will enable us to take concentrated action rather than individual action.” This practically was the burden of all the speeches in support of the suggestion. The representatives of the Farmers’ Union pleaded that their organisation would be capable of doing all that was required if it were loyally supported by the producers. But the majority of the speakers wanted an organisation resting on a somewhat broader basis and entirely free from the taint of politics. Ultimately a committee was set up to draft a constitution for the proposed council. Though the sense of the meeting was that the council should be strictly nonpolitical, the main purpose of the movement is to get a hearing from the Government in regard to matters affecting the man on the land.