The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. FRIDAY, JULY 11, 1913.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 3981, 11 July 1913, Page 4

The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. FRIDAY, JULY 11, 1913.

The great disadvantage muter which n. nnrt.TT must.

A Ludicrous State of Affairs.

a. party mast labor on account of having no re-

cognised leader was again strikingly illustrated in the House last night. In this regard things have been bad enough for the Opposition for the past twelve months; and it is no wonder that many of its members are anxious that Sir Joseph Ward should liurry back to the Dominion, for in him they see the only possible ‘.‘strong man” to take the party in hand again. As things stand to-day no-one could foretell which Liberal is likely to assume a position which it would be the duty of a regular head of the party to occupy. On one occasion Mr Russell, it seems, takes it upon himself to fill the role of the leader. Frequently, again, Mr McDonald has spoken, when it wbuld be expected that the official mouthpiece of the Liberals would speak on behalf of the party. In his turn Mr Hanan has also filled a similar capacity. And so on, and so on. Under such circumstances it would ofl course not be surprising if one ‘‘leader” should fail to quite agree

with another “leader” upon a* particular matter: indeed it could not be considered an unlikely happening if one “leader" should flatly contradict any view enunciated by any other “leader." But as was again shown in the course of the Address-in-Reply debate last night, it is possible for an even worse state of affairs to arise in the case of a party which has no recognised head. It may bo recalled first of all that on the occasion of the Budget Debate last session Mr Craigie, M.P. for Timaru, created a great surprise by moving a vote of noconfidence in the Massey Government, because it proposed to offer the right to the freehold to certain sections of Crown tenants. The members of the Liberal party were, of course, thrown into confusion, for in addition to the fact that he had never consulted them on the subject, quite a large body of them happen to be freeholders themselves 1 As might be expected, Mr Craigie’s amendment upon that occasion met with short shrift, the Government winning the division by 52 votes to 14. In view of that occurrence last session, one would have thought that Mr Craigie would have been carefully watched on the occasion of the present debate ; but once again the member for Timaru chose to surprise the party of which he is a member, with the result that the Opposition found itself in an even worse fix than he placed them in some eleven months ago! On this occasion, Mr Craigie, going entirely on his own, moved (it will be observed) a vote of no-confid-ence in the Massey Government as an indication that it had not, in ilis opinion, gone nearly far enough in connection with the taxation of large estates. Now this “surprise packet” was more unwelcome to members of the Liberal party than its predecessor, for it was so clumsily worded that it could quite easily mean that any member voting in favor of it would support ever-increasing taxation of small holdings as well as large holdings. Hurriedly then some of the “leaders" of the Liberals, it would appear, did all in their power to try and dissociate the Opposition from the amendment, with the result that they were so glad to see the last of it that when the brief discussion on the subject came to an end no-one was anxious to call for a division, and the amendment was consequently lost on the voices. As a sequel to this action on the part of Mr Craigie, no further hostile amendment will of course be possible in the course of the current debate, so that Mr Massey and his colleagues will be able now to serenely proceed on the even tenor of their way for at any rate some time to come.