THE GOVERNOR GENERAL’S SPEECH.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 June 1939, Page 6

THE GOVERNOR GENERAL’S SPEECH.

ALTHOUGH it was of wearisome length, the speech entrusted to his Excellency the Governor-General, at the ceremonial opening of Parliament yesterday restricted iiself even more closely°than has become customary for a good many years past jo topics that are not only familiar, but are tending to become threadbare. There is probably not a single item in the speech placed in the Governor-General’s hands yesterday with which /Ministers of the Crown luive not in recent times dealt in full and circumstantial detail—in some instances many times over. The ceremonial opening of Parliament by the King’s representative is a custom established on tradition and well worth continuing. Apart from its popular elements of the picturesque, there is in this observance a reminder of our public and political liberties and of the safeguards in which they are entrenched—even, for example, in the recognition always given, in the (Speech from the Throne, to the special standing and privilege of the directly elected representatives of the people where control of the public purse is concerned. The GovernorGeneral of a Dominion like New Zealand has an honourable position as the representative, in a free democracy, of a constitutional monarchy. So much the more on that account the King’s representative might well be spared, at the opening of Parliament, the task of reading what may by courtesy be called a needlessly detailed statement of the familiar and the obvious. There have been times, in the history of our own Parliament and others, when the Speech from the Throne has thrown interesting light—on occasion most intriguing light—on intended acts of policy in the session about to open. Where no such standard is attainable those upon whom it devolves to compose the. Speech from the Throne can hardly do better than take as their guide the old but true saying that brevity is the soul of wit.