AN UNPROFITABLE SESSION

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2693, 24 December 1909, Page 5

AN UNPROFITABLE SESSION

MUCH PROMISE—LITTLE PER-

FORMANCE

(Special to “Times.”) WELLINGTON, Doc. 22. The session, is practically elided. At the time of 'writing there is little to do beyond passing the Public Works Estimates, which daylight should see put thirough by the, process of exhaustion. willing enough in this instance, for there’ is no desire on either sioe of the House to remain over Christmas, and Sir Joseph Ward’s latest threat that the House would resume after Christmas to fiuisli the programme has been effective. Since then the “sau-sage-machine” process of legislation has been going on in both Houses, Members are packing up and some have already packed up and disappeared. Tomorrow it is expected that the supplementary estimates will be shot through like a bolt from a catapult. The Appropriation Bill will be passed, the usual wash-up business will be accomplished, and the session will probably finally he parodied by the customary mock Parliament. . The session, with all its wasteful expenditure of time, accompanied by a* corresponding prospective wasteful expenditure of money, has been productive of a great deal of legislation, but most of it has been rushed through at the last moment and will > possibly require patching ui> at an early date. It has been a session of compromise to fit hourly arising, circilnistances and conditions. Measures that were imperatively required at one period have been dropped at a later stage, others less imperative, but allegedly important, have had at the last moment the controversial clauses cut out to avoid controversy and have passed more or less in skeleton form. I have never known a session winch promised so much produce so little, and old members who, like myself, have , seen many sessions • through, arc pf the same opinion. The Government has been defeated time after time on matters it deemed to be of more than passThg importance and has accepted the position not with equanimity, but still has accepted it. Its majorities have been smaller on the whole than for many years. This is not so much because the Opposition is growing rapidly stronger as because the Government is growing manifestly weaker ; that is, there is a greater tendency, on the part of the members of the party to exercise independent judgment and to vote according to conviction rather than according to the demands of the whips.