WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 August 1922, Page 6

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

BUDGET DEBATE. 1 STILL HOLDS THE FLOOR. (Special Correspondent.) i Wellington. August 28. The debate on the Budget ran over the wee K-end, as every one expected it would, and probably will ‘ oqeupy the House for another week at least. The speeches generally have not been of a high order, member after member addressing himself to the constituencies, and saying very little that was either new or interesting in regard to finance. Members on the Opposition side of the Chamber have demanded some tangible evidence of the economies the Minister of Finance claims to have effected, and members on the Government side have retorted I asking these critics what more they would have done had they been in Mr. Massey’s position. The truth of the matter is that there are not half a dozen members in the House who have mastered even the rudimentary details of the public accounts. Mr. Massey has acquired a certain measure of facility in discussing finance, and is sensible enough to rely upon the heads of departments for his facts, bur. Sir Joseph Ward and the Eon. Arthur Myers in this respect have been sadly missed from .the present Parliament, and there is no one on either side of the House who seems at all likely to take their place. A CASE IN POINT. The profound ignorance of the public accounts . which .pervades practically the whole Of the House was illustrated in an astounding fashion on Thursday night, when the Hon. W. Nosworthy, the Minister of Agriculture, stated that in 1912 Sir Joseph Ward, who was then Minister of Finance, had wound up the year with a deficit of £907.000. and that in the succeeding year Sir James Allen, who in the interval had supplanted Sir Joseph Ward at the Treasury, had a surplus of £709.000. That a Minister of the Crown should have made such an . egregious blunder as this was astonishing enough, but that' not a single member on either side of the House should have offered a syllable of dissent was still more astonishing. There cannot be many grown men outside Parliament who do not know that -neither Mr. S idon nor Sir Joseph Ward, during the time he was in charge of the Treasury, was faced by a deficit, but apparently* there was no one in the House on Thursday night, on the Opposition side at any rate, who knew Mr. Nosworthy had blundered. It was not until the conclusion of the sitting, instigated, no doubt, by one of his colleagues, that the Minister explained be had made a mistake. In 1912, he said. Sir Joseph Ward had a surplus of £513,000.

ELECTORAL ROLLS. One of the funny incidents during Friday’s sitting of the House was a complaint by Mr. W. T. Jennings, the alert member for Waitomo, that his name had been struck off the electoral roll for his own district. Mi’. Jennings was protesting against the wholesale and careless removal of names from the roll, and quoted his own case as a very horrid example. “I was in New Plymouth last Monday,” he said, “and I found my name had been struck off. I was told at the post office that the officers did not know any one of the name of W. T. Jennings.” Of* course there was the obvious comment from one of the humorists of the House, “Such is fame,” but. judging from what Mr. Jennings went on to say he errors of some of the electoral oiucers are no jesting matter. In the Waitomo district alone no fewer than 3500 names have been struck off the roll, including those of farmers who had resided in the district for twenty years and voted at the last three elections. The Prime Minister was impressed, and promised to have the closest inquiry made. CONTESTING EVERY SEAT. A report is being put about to the effect that the'Reformers intend to contest every seat at the approaching general election, and it is understood to be based on a determination of their party organisation. If this really is the case there will be many minority representatives returned to the House next December, but this, of course, will be the fault of the Liberals and the Social Democrats, and not of the supporters of the Government. At the election of 1919 none of the parties contested every seat, and where a Liberal or Reform candidate was opposing a Labor candidate, the supporters of the older party not directly represented in the fight, with very rare exceptions, threw in their lot with Labor. Mr. Sullivan, the very capable Labor member .for Avon, clearly owes his seat to the Reform voters in his constituency, and it will be interesting to see what happens when he goes to the poll without their assistance. The Hon. G. W. Russell, the gentleman Mr. Sullivan ousted, is again to be the Liberal candidate.