Parliamentary Jottings.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 185, 6 August 1901, Page 3

Parliamentary Jottings.

(FBOM OUR SPECIAL CORBESPOKDBNT.) The Referendum Bill, providing that important questions of various kinds. may be submitted direct to the vote of the people, duly passed through the Lower House, but to all appearances is likely to be thrown out of the Legislative Council. It may, I think, be considered dead for this session. The Abolition of the Totalisator wai moved by Mr Ell, one of the

members for Christehurch, and although vigorously opposed byjaome memhers, it seems very likely that it would have been on a straight-out division. But the discussion came on in the evening of last Friday, on which day the House sits at 10.30 a.m., and rises at 10.30. p.m. The consequence was that the debate on the subject was not concluded when the hour for the House rising had arrived, and the matter is probably shelved for the session, as there will be little chance of the question coming Qp again owing to the congested state of the Order Paper.

The Domestic Servants' Halfholiday Bill was so favourably received that the House passed it on the voices without any debate whatever. It is dowa for the committee stage for the 14th August, and apparently has a very good chance of getting through this session.

A very interesting debate is likely to ariose over a notice of motion given by the Premier. It is so interesting that I give it to in full: —Right Hon. R. J. Seddon to move, " That a respectful Address be presented to His Excellency the Governor, praying that he will communicate with the Secretary of State for the Colonies, requesting that an impartial investigation be hflld touching the unfounded and u.nmriied remark?, made by "His Excellency the Governor of Fiji in his speech at the opening of the Wainibokasi Hospital, and in which he stated : ' If the chiefs and the more intelligent amongst you ask yourselves the question, What has this New Zealand party got to gain from us ? you will not have to wait very long before you see tbe answer. You have the laud, my friends, and that is what they want to get, and hope that tbey will get if you iro foolish enough to listen to them. It has always been the same in every country under the kind of government that thera is in New Zealand—the white men have always taken the land from the ■coloured owners. It has been so iu Zealand, where tbe land once til belonged to tbe coloured people. iVho owns that land now ? The white people have got nearly the whole of it; the coloured people are cooped up in the fragment of land that has been left to them, and many of them have no land at all. What has happened in New Zealand to the coloured people's iatid will happen here too if New Zealand gets. :his country.' And which said statements, so reflecting on this colony, were by order of the Governor, Sir George o v ßrien, and in a Government paper, circulated throughout Fiji." Many members are asking where this sort of thing is to stop. Are we to make a practice of discussing every aci or statement a Governor may choose to do or make all over the world. *AIR RENT BILL. The question is already raised whether the Act should not apply to the 999 years' lease. The lease-in-perpetuity system tbe 999 years' lease—is regarded very unfavourably by a majority, I believe, of the present House.