WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 January 1922, Page 7

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

THE RETERENCHMENT BILL. MIXED RECEPTION IN HOUSE. ('Special Correspondent.) Wellington, June 20. The Prime Minister was not at his best when moving the second reading of the Retrenchment Bill in the House last night. Hampered by a sheaf of notes and a running fire of interjections, he seemed never at his ease, and at times labored his points sadly. Probably he would have done better had he not anticipated many of the objections .that would be urged against his proposals, and attempted to demolish them before they were uttered. This was meeting trouble half way, and meeting it at a disadvantage. But he at least made the necessity for retrenchment plain and presented the facts quite frankly. If either the necessity« or the facts had been in dispute, the manner of his speech might have been forgiven for the sake of its matter. But they were not questioned for a single moment. What the House had to decide was how it could cut between two and three millions off the pay of the civil service without impairing its efficiency and with the least possible inconvenience to its members. Mr. Massey proposed to take the highst percentage olf the lowest salaries, and thus brought himself into conflict with the popular slogan of equality of sacrifice.

OPPOSITION CRITICISM. Mr. Massey’s explanation of his departure from the usual course of procedure was that the higher paid civil servants had not participated, in the cost of living bonus and therefore should not suffer to the same pro rata extent from the operation of retrenchment as those that had. Mr. Wilford, who followed the Prime Minister, scoffed at this “subterfuge,” and held strongly that the graduation, instead of being against the low-salaried employee, should relieve him of a substantial part of his burden. The logic was sound enough, and the leader of the official Liberal Opposition appeared to carry more than his immediate followers with him. «He scored, also in demanding the production of the report of the Economy Committee, in challenging the basic value of the cost of living figures, and insisting upon the right of aggrieved public servants to be heard before a properly constituted tribunal; but he was a little too much of the special pleader and not enough of the ardent apostle to be entirely convincing. THE LABOR VIEW.

The Minister of Justice, the Hon. E. P Lee, is never at home in the discussion of finance, and his attempts to confute the contentions of his professional brother on the other side of the House left the case for the Opposition unscathed. Mr. H. E. Holland, the leader of the official Labor Party, speaking rather to the crowded galleries than to the House, imparted a piquancy to the debate it had lacked up to this point. He regarded the Bill as tlie gravest attack ever launched against the workers in New Zealand, and his party would consent to no reduction in salaries under £5OO. He wanted to know what had become of the accumulated surpluses of twenty-three millions, and particularly of last year’s surplus of six millions. He would not hesitate to lay hands on the salary of the Gov-ernor-General and the Judges, and he would see Ministers contributed something more than a beggarly 10 per cent, from their big salaries. The Labor view of the Government’s proposals was left in no shadow of doubt. DRAGS ON. Reform, Official Liberalism, and Official Labor having spoken their pieces, the galleries gradually emptied, and the debate dragged on through a long weary night without any incident of great consequence. The revival of “legislation by exhaustion” was inevitable after the Prime Minister had thrown down the gauntlet to the various groups of the Opposition. But really no other course was open to Mr. Massey after he had determined to get the measure through before the end of the current month, and every member of the House, whether for or against the Government proposals, wanted to talk Hansard for the benefit of his constituents, and any indulgence on the part of the leader would have been interpreted into a confession of weakness. The Labor members, and, with less resolution', a section of the Liberal members, have their back to the wall, and though the ultimate result is not to be averted it will be reached only after a trial of physical endurance without any parallel in the recent meetings of’ Parliament.