ALL TALK AND NO CIDER.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume I, Issue 37, 16 September 1867, Page 2

ALL TALK AND NO CIDER.

When we commenced to summarize for our last issue, the long-winded debate on the financial proposals of the Government we fully expected that we should have news of its termination before wo went to press, but in this we wore disappointed. We concluded our summary with the statement that on the fourth dav of the debate it was, on the motion of Mr John Williamson, again adjourned. It in fixet lasted two days longer, when, after all the speechifying which had been indulged in, it resulted in nothing. Parliament like the shorn pig, made a great outcry, but gave no wool. It was u all talk and no cider.” The circumstance suggests the cjuestion whether fluent speakers made the best legislators, and whether men best qualified to take lead in a Legislative Assembly, are also best qualified to administer the aflairs of a country like New Zealand. The state the colony is in xvould suggest a reply in the negative, and the result of this long debate would tend to prove its correctness. The debate extended over six evenings and no less than forty-one speeches were delivered. On Thursday August 29th, the House, on the motion of the Colonial Treasurer, was asked to resolve itself with a committee of supply, and on Friday, September 6th, it was allowed to do so. We should like a return to be furnished of .the amount of. money this purposeless debate has cost the country. We do not mean to sav that the arguments, facts, and varied information contained in some of the

speoclms wore not interesting’ and to the purpose, but we do mean to say that ■they resulted in nothing. If it was not the intention of the leader of the Opposition to take the sense of the House on the financial policy of the Government as a whole, he ought to have delayed his opposition until the measures were introduced by means of which Ministers propose to give effect to that policy. If members had said at first what they virtually said at last, that they accepted the Ministerial Policy as a whole, but objected to some of its details, they could have at once gone into committee of supply, and made their objections to the details when they were before them. A Legislature is not a Debating Club, but Hansard, and a too indulgent Speaker appear likely to transform ours into one.

The financial condition of Auckland, as painted by Mr Williamson, her Superintendent, is even worse than it has ever before been represented. The actual revenue of that Province for the last year was no more than £0070: it is useless, therefore, for the House to insist on the payment of interest on the allocated debt. Mr Bunny followed, supporting the policy of the Government. He said that “ they had been told that the tariff pressed heavily upon the working classes, but it was all nonsense ; it pressed upon all classes, and they could not expect, after an expensive war, that the tariff would not do so.” On the other hand, Mr Ludlam is reported to have said, that “ the majority of the members of that House felt that the present taxation was oppressive to the country, and that the people could not bear an increase ” Mr Me Andrew, for once, coincided with Mr Ludlam. “ The financial policy did not grapple with the situation ; it did not remove the great evil under which the Colony was laboring—excessive taxation. The House would be failing in its duty if it did not take some steps to mitigate, this evil. This excessive taxation was exercising a most depressing effect upon the country. The evil was aggravated because the money raised was being expended on unproductive objects.” After sundry other speeches had been made for and against going into committee of supply the debate, on the motion of Mr Main, was again adjourned.

On Friday the dehate ■was brought to a close; the only speech made worth referring to was of the Premier himself. He said that lie did not concur in the statements that had been made that the present depressed state of the country was owing to the heavy taxation. He proceeded to show that the depression originated in other causes, but bo failed to prove that heavy taxation during a general depression would not be more keenly felt, and would not tend greatly to augment such depression. He made one statement which we consider unanswerable. He said that the General Assembly when it passed the Allocated Loan Act of 1863, had no more right to allocate a portion of the loan to certain parts of the Colony than the English Parliament would have had to impose upon Ireland the payment of the money spent upon it during the famine. At the conclusion of the debate, a division was twice called for; but as not a single member was found to say “no ” ( to the proposition of the Treasurer that the House go into committee of supply no division could be taken, and the "consequence was that the House went into committee on Friday, August 3rd, instead of on Thursday, September 29th, proving that/’great talkers are hut little doers” and that the motto—“ deeds not words ” tinds no acceptance in our Colonial Parliament. A “ Hansard ” that would tell us what our members do and not what they say, would he much more useful and much less costly than the one which really inspired this wordy debate.

Wo are not insensible of the aid which oral disscussion may render to constitutional freedom, but when words are substituted for acts, when verbose discussions become not the exception hut the rule, when speeches are printed for circulation amongst a member’s constituents at tbs public expense, andwhen men speak not so much to he heard as to lie read, oral disscussion is diverted from its legitimate purposes, and provokes the enquiry whether under these circumstances members should not write out what they have to say for the t: Hansard” instead of paying- a staff of reporters, out of the public funds, to do it for them. By the adoption of this plan much valuable time would he saved; there would not he half the speeches written out as are now spoken ; and those that were written would be shorn of half their dimensions. Tho cost of a reporting staff would therefore not only he saved, hut the cost of printing the “ Hansard ” would he reduced to one-third the amount it now entails on the public. If each of the members who spoke against this or that part of the financial scheme, had said that he had objections to it which he should reserve until the Bill relating to it was before the House, the debate need not have lasted a single sitting, instead of extending itself over more than a week, to the neglect of public business, to the ruin of"oratorv, and to the annihilation of that vigorous action which the circumstances of the Colony demands at the hands of its Government.