LEGISLATION BY EXHAUSTION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9673, 22 December 1909, Page 4

LEGISLATION BY EXHAUSTION.

The process of "legislation by. ex- ; haustion" as carried on in the present Parliament has now reached a point when it has become a scandal. The House met at 10 o'clock on Friday morning, and it sat until 5.30 o'clock on Saturday morning. It then adjourned for four and a half hours uritil 10 a.m., when it sat until midnight, and probably would have continued still longet> but for the fortunate circumstance of Sunday intervening. At' 1 o'cVfick on Saturday morning, when the House had been sitting tor fifteen hours, Mr Massey made 'an emphatic protest against this method of dealing with the country's business. He drew attention to the state of the House.*' A casual inspection showed that out of 80 members, there were 20 present, and some of these were lying down asleep. Yet these were the conditions under which the Government chose to force through the Estimates, and thousands of pounds of the people's money were voted away by a handful of members physically incapable, through exhaustion, of considering what they were doing, still less of submitting the expenditure proposed by the Government to any intelligent criticism or investigation.