THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1909. LEGISLATION BY EXHAUSTION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9674, 23 December 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1909. LEGISLATION BY EXHAUSTION.

If Parliamentary government is the inevitable and irrevocable method of modern democracy then Parliamentary methoda must be drastically reformed or modern democracy must be regarded a« doomed. For not even the most unreasoning admirer of a dominant party and the most devout believer in the peculiarly democratic theory that a minority has no rights, can intelligently justify the legislative methods of which we have recently had such glaring instances in our New Zealand Parliament, | culminating in the all day-and-nieht sitting which ended in the bright davlight of Saturday morning, at which sitting a great portion of the Estimates was worked through by an automatic majority, although there was no "stonewall" to overcome and no facetious criticism to encounter. It may be said that this is the penalty we pay for the adjournment of Parliament in order to allow the Prime Minister to attend the Naval Conference, but reference to preceding Parliamentary years will show that .our sessions invariably end in such extraordinary exhibitions of the complete collapse of the deliberate siae of our Parliamentary institutions. Dealing editorially with the question of legislation by exhaustion the "New Zealand Herald" says:—Whether Parliament assembled in June or in October, whether it wastes months or weeks in frivolous word-weaving, the invariable conclusion is the crushing through, by sheer brute strength, of business which is particularly entitled to careful attention and close consideration. Short as the present session has been, it has been quite normal, both in its wasting of time ,• nd in its crushing of debate. For

strange as ihis may seem to the trust- j ful democrat, who sees Parliamentary forms through coloured glasses and { imagines a devoted idealist in the j successful local politician, it is a j fact that the spilling upon the of invaluable time is the inevitable accompaniment ot legislation by exhaustion. If the whole system is explainable by any general rule—and we al? know how difficult and how unsatisfactory generalisations are—it would be by the statement that it is habitual with members to waste Parliamentary time in listening to themselves talk, whether they have anything to say or not, and that thi Government after allowing its sup porters to abate their appetite or declaiming, coolly throttles all possibility of either reasonable or unreasonable argument by forcing desired legislation through the House by the use of an automatic majority against an exhausted minority. The Government, it will be noticed, never resorts to this weapon when its own party organisation is in question, promptly dropping the Land Bill | rather than offend its Leaseholder?, although it is asxured of a decisive majority in favour of the Freehold. Nor was the Government willing to legislate by exhaustion in the matter of the Defence Bill, which was being very unexpectedly challenged clause by clause in a more or less party spirit, and this by avowed advocates of universal training upon whom the onus of its failure might have rested. Legislation by exhaustion is the process where necessity drives or where the Government feels itself compelled to make a • stand, either to assert its policy or to maintain its prestige. And the resist've power of Parliament, we would point out, is crippled by the waste of energy, words and dignity over motions and measures winch simply do not matter.