THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1907. A GOOD RIDDANCE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8987, 23 November 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1907. A GOOD RIDDANCE.

Should the session close to-day—as is expected—it will have run one clay longer than the session of 1903, and will thus have established a record for duration. It may be remarked also that it will have established a record for waste of time, for indigested and reactionary legislation, and for the disgraceful scamper through important business in its last hours. For the first twelve weeks of the session there Was practically nothing done in the way of legislation beyond the passage of the trinity of land bills: and it would have been better for the country had these measures been left in abeyance until after the general election. The most important of all the policy bills was brought dowa only this week, and was forced through the Lower House with a rapidity that bodes ill for its usefulness. Indeed, so crude and so unjust is it in some of its main features, that it will probably prove inoperative, and have to be entirely, recast next session. During the past fortnight both branches of the Legislature have been working from afternoon to night and night to morning with coats off and shirt-sleeves rolled up manufacturing laws at the rate of several an hour; and when members go home at the beginning of next week tiny will feel in the happy position of the man who paid a debt with a promissory note and innocently exclaimed, "There '. Thank heaven. that debt's settled!" As a matter of fact, members have nothing to congratulate themselves upon s«i far as the performance of their Parliamentary duties is concerned; i-aiher they have much to be ashamed of, for never has there been a session so utterly wasted or used to worse advantage, or one in which so little legislative and business acumen have been brought to bear in the conduct of the affairs of the country. If the dominion were a proprietary affair, and Parliament, its board of directors, the board would bo ruthlessly swept away at the first general, meeting of shareholders. As it is, we, in om mon with the bulk of the people of

the dominion, are glad to see the back seam of the stocking of Parliament, and rejoice t*hat there must be a fairly long interval before any further faddist legislation can be thrust upon the country.