WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 July 1922, Page 6

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL’S SPEECH. BREVITY WITHOUT WIT. (Special Correspondent.) Wellington, June 30. The local newspapers are not profoundly impressed by the quality of the speech put into the mouth of His Excellency the Governor by his responsible advisers at the opening of Parliament on Wednesday. The Post, beginning by calling it a dull performance, goes on to say it was “too flat, too dull, too insipid to attract, to repel or to interest.” The evening journal has not a w’ord of praise even for its brevity. “Such a monotony of dullness,” it declares, “is powerless to produce any emotion but that of weariness.” Proceeding from generalities to particulars, after sighing for the good old days “when Mr. Seddon was accustomed to do these things in a much brighter style,” it complains that of the two things Lord Jellicoe was made to say about the League of Nations one was inaccurate and the other superfluous. Of course the “Speech from the Throne.” itself a relic from a by-gone age which very well might be committed to the limbo of forgotten things, always lends itself to treatment of this kind from the cynical writer, but on this occasion his opportunities appear to have been particularly tempting.

THE PROBLEM OF ECONOMY. The Dominion finds no more inspiration in the Speech than does the Post, and a little irrelevantly vents its disappointment upon that well intentioned body, the W’elfare League, which recently entered, a little timidly, it would seem, into the field of finance to urge in familiar platitudes the need for < drastic economy. “What does the Welfare League mean,” it asks, “when it says the Government is right to practice economies and wrong to cut off any part of the increased salaries which have helped to make economy necessary? Is the League, like some of the politicians, shirking an unpleasant, task ” Of course the League is not ; shirking an unpleasant task —the good | work it has attempted, in other direci tions should save it from that suspicion—but quite likely it does not i fully realise the magnitude of the pro- , blem confronting the Government. Mr. ■ Massey is pledged to a saving of some I five millions, and this saving is not : going to be effected by any of the palj liatives suggested by the League. It is only by a radical operation the root of the trouble can be removed. THE CUT. The various civil service organisations have been hard at work during the recess, and members of Parliament from all parts of the Dominion have come to Wellington fully armed with arguments against the enforcement of the second cut in salaries. Yesterday the Government was bombarded with questions on the subject, chiefly from the Opposition benches, and at the conclusion of the assault the Prime Minister promised that he would make a statement in which he would reveal the financial position of the Dominion and outline the intentions of the Government. Mr. Massey gave no hint of the course he would follow, but there is a feeling pervading the lobbies that the cut will be at least postponed. It is understood that the President of the Arbitration Court has been unable to discover any further decline in the cost of living since his last report, and that he is disinclined to make any recommendation which would be helpful to the Minister. In these circumstances Mr. Massey’s position is an extremely difficult one and at the moment some of his political friends do not appear to be giving him much assistance in his dilemma. A MINISTER RESTRAINED. I Not because there is any popular illI will towards the Hon. C. J. Parr, who I is conscientious and zealous in the dis- • charge of the duties of his high office, • but because public, sympathy always goes out to a woman in distress, there is general rejoicing that the Minister of Education has been restrained by an injunction of the Supreme Court, pronounced by Mr. Justice Salmond, from taking the proceedings he had contemplated to deprive Miss Park of her teacher’s certificate. Miss Park, it will be remembered, had been accused of tending towards disloyalty in her written and spoken utterances, and of refusing to submit to the discipline of the constituted authority, and though Mr. Justice Salmond was not called upon to pronounce any opinion on these points it is fairly obvious from his carefully prepared judgment that he did not think she had been guilty of anything worse than a trivial indiscretion. There should be no question about Miss Park’s loyalty in the broad practical sense, and her definition of the sovereign’s place in the Constitution is one the most ardent loyalist might accept.