THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9166, 14 August 1908, Page 6

THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

(By Frank Morton.) '

A Part/iamkntary Picnic. —On 1 National . Comaiunications. Press AND PARIjI AMENT.—TIIK MATTER OF Hansard. As 1 write, the first through train to Auckland has just gone over the Main Trunk Railway. It is a select train, being a Parliamentary ; and it is a glad train, the occasion being exceptionally convivial. One imagines it threading the wild ways of the North, scattering discarded glass and a joyous glow. I drink nothing stronger than ginger-pop myself; but I should have liked to be on that train, if only to encourage the others. " I love to see a bevy of New Zealanders exuding goodwill towards men; it is a thing so quaint and stimulating. I seem to hear as from a great distance the songs and plaudits of the resounding tr.iin. My nostrils catch some suggestion of the odorous trail of the train, the trail of fruity flavour and cooling cigar-smoke. In a vision I see Mr Wilford, his eye in a line frenzy rolling, as he thinks out four more words of the great poem he is some day to publish. Near by sits Mr Hone Heke, a poet still more deliberate and determined. Somewhere ahead (they knew) are the ships of the free American. Free heart calls aloud to free. More significant to New Zealand than the coming of this Fleet is the fact tiat the Main Trunk Railway is virtually open at last. There will now be a national line of communication from Auckland to the Bluff, just as soon as the Government does the obviously proper thing and runs its own ferry from Wellington to Lyttelton. if we are to be at all consistent in the socialising of our principal services, the Government must maintain this ferry. And the time will come, unless some radical change is made soon, when the Government will have to convey its own mails to and from Australia. In a matter of this kind—especially when it is remembered that our English mails go chiefly by Australia —the State should not be for ever at the mercy of a private company. If there were compe tition of private companies the posi - tion might be quite otherwise. It would certainly be an excellent thing for New Zealand if two good companies were competing for the carriage of passengers and mails between this and Australia. We should have a better and speedier service; and in course of time a cheaper service; and we should have some reasonable regularity of mails. This week again the Maheno, boomed as a "flyer" a year or two ago, took four and a-half days in making the passage from Sydney. The mails via Auckland reached the North very late in the staid and cautious Mokoia. And the result was that in Wellington we got our English mails on Thursday—some of them very late on Thursday. If the Union Steamship Company cannot carry the mails on time, some other Company should do it. If the mails were conveyed by the State, it would be done; because {Parliament would take care that it was done. The Huddart-Parker steamer makes good trips, pnd the Moeraki makes good trips; but of the others, no man can predict anything. Talk of the weather is mostly fudge. Mail steamers should be reasonably independent of the weather. On the Western Ocean, mail steamers run to time or pny. If the Union Company had to pay whenever it kept the country waiting a day or two for an English mail, the country would precious seldom be kept waiting.

Matters have settled into reasonably good shape in the make-shift Parliament House. Even the Press —or the section of the Press which enjoys Parliamentary conveniencedeclares itself satisfied. When the new House is built, it will be well for the Press as a whole to have something to say in regard to the general matter of accommodation for reporters in Parliament. At present, the Prnss-room is a sort of club, where a lew young gentlemen of the parish and a stray journalist or two, have things their own way. A newspaper that desires to have its representative accommodated (as newspapers do in other parts of the world) claim accommodation as a right; it must go cap in hand to 1 these untravelled young gentlemen. If the young gentlemen decide that they have not spare chairs enough to accommodate their overcoats and handbags, they will tell the newspaper that there's no room, Newspapers have been told so; and it would seem that in New Zealand, among other meek things, there are some pretty meek newspapers. Of course, all this comfortable little club idea is absolute twaddle. The general taxpayer does not pay to maintain a comfortable little club in Parliament for the benefit of a few metropolitan reporters. The Speaker should maintain and exert his full powers relative to the admission and accommodation of reporters. Broadly, the position should be that any reputable newspaper should be able to secure a place for its men in the Gallery—not of gi-ace, but of right. There are very special reasons why the Parliament of New Zealand should be absolutely open to the Press. To start with, the reports of "Hansard" are extremely imperfect. Debates in committee are virtually unrepoitckl; and some of the most important debates of every session are in Committee. It is true that in Australia debates in Committee are reported in the third person; but, they are in every case fairly and fully reported.' An Australian "Hansard" gives ,an absolutely accurate and detailed report of the proceedings of Parliament. Members are not permitted to tamper with the reports of cheir speeches. An obvious or flagrant error in facts or figures may in certain cases be corrected, by consent of Mr Speaker; but that is all. Members cannot revise their speeches, and make them pretty arid pallid. In New Zealand members certainly do take great liberties with their"proofs, whatever the theory of revision may be. More than that, the systt Ti under which "Hansard" men have been appointed in the past is not a gorul system. Many of the apo'iiiitments have been political. Mi *3ters have appointed their secretaries and friends. Now, the reporting of Parliament, if it is to be accurately and perfectly done, is a task calling for ripe experience, and a very special fitness. Skill in shorthand is a slight thing in itself, although it is a primary essential to

: fitness in ttds kinds* On the face of it, to appoint a man to "Hansard" for personal or political reasons is a farce. But in New Zealand there are many equally absurd anomalies.