POLITICAL NOTES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2684, 14 December 1909, Page 5

POLITICAL NOTES.

SALES OF LEASE IN PERPETUITY GOODWILL. ‘

(Special to "Times.”) WELLINGTON, Dec. 11. According to a return laid on the table of the House yesterday, the total number of tenants under the lease in perpetuity scheme, who, during the two years ended 31st October, 1909, liave sold the goodwill of their leases is 1794. The number of times the goodwill of such sections have been sold is set down ae 2965. There is a voluminous list showing the goodwill prices in the various sales, and in most instances the figures go up by leaps and bounds. In one instance the goodwill was first disposed of for nothing, and the purchaser subsequently sold out for £3OO. In another instance the first goodwill sale was for £IOOA and the second purchased gave £3IOO, with other lands for the -goodwill. Again, it is shown that a first sale of goodwill brought the lessee in £2200, and he resold for £4OOO. This kind of thing is common, according to the figures of the return, which, however, is too bulky to analyse in anythng like detail. - WASTE TIME AND RUSH. The Parliamentary week lias been a. mixture of waste time and rush; and the conditions have been such as to ensure defective legislation. It is impossible to suppose that members can sit for six days a week, and often until dawn, and do justice to measures of great national importance. Members freely admit this and yet they toleratet in the hope of securing the prorogation before Christmas. The Premier constantly avers that he deprecates legislation by exhaustion, but is content to sit up and keep the House sitting up till 4 a.m.; and then start again at 10 a.m. as was the case to-day. Members are so weary in ' the early hours of the morning that, of the bare quorum left in the Chamber, half are in a somnolent and “yawny” condition, and others are to be seen fast asleep in. a sitting or recumbent position. To-day between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. no fewer than thirty-one local bills were put through one or other of their stages, the speed being of a lightning character. One bill was put through all its stages in under three minutes. Among the multitude of bills that got through with the rapidity of sausages through a .sausage machine was the Gisborne High School Amendment Bill. In conversation with an old politician to-day he said he considered the •ork of the session more unsatisfactory than that of any session he had experienced. The coming week or ten days will be a terror, for the House is to sit from 10 a.m. each day until any time the Premier likes to insist upon. Almost the whole work of the session has to Indisposed of in that time, and if mem- - hers stand the strain, they may at least be credited with the possession, of conspicuous physical powers, whatever other quality they may lack.