THE. Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, APRIL 6, 1908. A MINISTERIAL THUMB-SCREW.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9058, 6 April 1908, Page 4

THE. Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, APRIL 6, 1908. A MINISTERIAL THUMB-SCREW.

Criticising an article in *.he "Hawke's Bay Herald," the (government organ in Wellington on . Saturday contains the following pregnant paragraph: — "The 'Hawke's Bay Herald* i-j faced with a dilemma. Being a conscientious Opposition journal it finds it imperative to curse the Government for its extravagant and reckless expenditure, but being also a solicitous town pump oracle it hopes its remarks will not deter the Government from spending a lot of money on the Napier-Gisborne railway project*" This provides a text upon which many columns of comment might be founded. The fact that a journal which has consistently supported the Liberal Administration for many years, and is the latter's most strenuous Press ally to-day, should even inferentially admit'the inadvisability of a paper criticising the Government if it desires to facilitate the carrying out of public works in the district in which the paper circulates, speaks volumes against an undesirable phase of political procedure which has grown up in this dominion, and which has been used for the purpose of keeping the Government in power. Our Wellington contemporary's inadvertant admission simply emphasises a fact which all who have followed the trend of political events for the past decade are quite conversant with, and which the conscientious and reflective multitude must deplore. The disbursement of public moneys by the Government ought not in the slightest degree to be dependent upon the political support or opposition of members of the Legislature or of the Press, but undeniably it is to a greater oilers extent. This is particularly so in the matter of votes for public works. The ordinary power which the Government has of allocating district votes in the Public Works

Estimates enables a Ministry to make such discriminations as it thinks fit; but it has a still greater power in a recent legal provision which permits the votes set against pa-ticular works for particular districts to be diverted at the will of the Minister to similar works in other districts; so that a member is never sure even when an appropriation is made for his electoral district that it will not be withheld or transferred to some more complaisant electorate. The system is utterly bad in principle and enables a Government to hold as it were a golden rod over the backs of Ministerial supporters who show signs of recalcitrancy, as well as over the heads of straight-out Oppositionists. Constituencies are human. They desire to see their electorates progress; they know that they cannot progress without necessary public works, and naturally they seek candidates as a rule who are most likely to carryweight with the distributors of public doles. It is obvious that such a state of things should in the interests of the dominion be ended, but the difficulty is to find a means of ending it. It is not likely to be suggested by Ministers, who know the value of the power of the purse; nor, under existing conditions, can it be reasonably expected that Ministerial supporters in the House will have the temerity to propose a curtailment of the powers of the Government in the matter. The Opposition has more than once drawn attention to the evils of the system, but it may be doubted if that party, once in power, would be to remove such a useful party thumbscrew. It would seem that in the ultimate the remedy must rest with the electors rather than with Cabinet or Parliament. Only when public opinion sets dead against the practice —which has no moral basis, and only party expedience to recommend it —and gives expression to its views in the character of the men it sends to Parliament, will there be hope of a change for the better. Until that political millennium is reached things are likely to remain very much as they are.