The Dominion, Thursday, July 23, 1925. p. 10.
Peeps at Parliament: From the Ladies' Gallery — Interrogation Day Again

(By “Novitia.”)

I should hate to deceive you—yes, really I should—and so must, without further shilly-shallying, inform you that to-day was another of those dreadful examination days which swoop down on the stricken House every week or so. Once upon a time, in the days of our extreme youth and innocence, we used to go to Sunday School, and therein were catechised from little pink books, containing all manner of highly personal questions and their true and correct replies—which last we, being sober and industrious infants, knew by heart—er—didn't we? Something of the same nature happens during question time, only in this case the questions, instead of being merely difficult, are, in the main, unanswerable. And, what's more, the people who propound the questions in question know it. They submit a really difficult poser to some most unhappy Minister with an expression that says right out loud, "There's a nut for you to crack, my lad!"

One rather amusing and altogether praiseworthy feature of the day's work is that each member is allowed to explain the reasons for his unreasonable demands for exactly five minutes—thus far and no farther. Mr. Witty, of the Reform benches, was a pathetic case in point. He had ever so many things on his mind: first of all there were the attendants in mental hospitals.²⁰⁹ It appears that, after some twenty years of attending, the attendants become so perfectly attuned to their surroundings that an unbiased outsider, seeing them in company with their patients, might find it a little difficult to tell "who's which and which is t'other."²¹⁰ Mr. Witty suggests that a short but sweet spell in prison (not as a bona fide inmate, but as a warder), might tend to relieve the drab monotony of the asylum attendant's life.²¹¹ Well, well, it's all a matter of taste, isn't it?

Then, seeing the Speaker's eye fastened upon him with all the forceful tenacity of a grappling-iron, Mr. Witty, breaking forth into a profuse perspiration, proceeded to his next topic—free school books for children.²¹² Well, seriously speaking, I think that's quite a nice idea, don't you? We've introduced free libraries, free dental clinics, and free sports instruction. Now, keeping on with the good work, we might bring in free books, free-for-all lunches, free fights and—and so forth. But somehow the Minister of Education doesn't seem to think that we will.²¹³

The School Journal was another very dry bone of contention. One member of the Labour-Socialist party solemnly informed us that it wasn't nearly dry enough. He wanted more informative and instructive articles—you know the kind of thing, don't you?—and less Ber-ludd and Thunder.²¹⁴ Dear, dear! It's a terribly long time since some of us used to smuggle the lives and letters of Deadwood Dick and Buffalo Bill into our desks, and read them when the teacher wasn't looking.

Everything's altogether different by night, isn't it? The old House by day has the solid and worldly-looking dignity of an English country mansion and becomes a place "full of whispers and of shadows."²¹⁹ I could have sworn that I saw a gargoyle, with a nasty, sarcastic look in its eye, surveying me from under that medieval-looking archway. On investigation it proved, however, to be merely my morbid imagination. As I entered in at the revolving door in the wing I heard a gentle and strangely familiar sound: it proceeded from an orderly who, with eyes shut and mouth open, was lying back in his chair, apparently doing deep-breathing exercises. I took this as an omen, and wasn't far wrong. Up in the Council Chamber members in dozens were performing similar exercises: seems to be a cult among them—some new form of Coueism, perhaps.²²⁰ But there are nearly always sultanas in the suet pudding. The Shearers' Accommodation Amendment Bill provided the House with a suitable amount of simple and wholesome entertainment.²²¹ I won't say that Mr. Langstone's Bill was as good as a play; it was as bad as a comic film—the kind where everyone puts his feet on the mantelpiece and throws custard pie at his wife. Mr. Langstone, while not laying stress upon these particular privileges for his proteges, the sheep-shearers, makes demands quite as inconvenient.²²²

For whereas the small farmer of the backblocks, whose burden already is greater than he can bear, might stand an occasional custard pie, it would, in a manner of speaking, be just a little difficult for him to provide a hot and cold water-service for his shearers; separate sleeping apartments, with flowers in the vases, and hand-embroidered pillow-shams; concrete killing pens, three hundred yards removed from the aristocratic noses of above-mentioned shearers; and just a few similar little trifles, all strictly unnecessary.²²³

Poor Mr. Monteith was perfectly horrified at the idea that just because the installation of a hot water service might ruin a small farmer, the shearers should be allowed, like the farmer's wife and children, to content themselves with cold water for the week or so during which they are employed at the shearing station. The sheep-owners' alternatives, according to the Labour Party, are these: Get hot water or—get into it.²²⁴ If you were a sheep-owner, wouldn't you be shaking in your ill-gotten shoes?

But I've thought out a suitable solution for the sleeping accommodation question, and Mr. Langstone can have it all to himself. If he likes, he can make it part—the better part—of his Bill. Let him propose legislation commanding the sheep-owner, his wife, and such children as he may have been extravagant enough to have, to erect a little tent somewhere in the farm-yard, and leave the bedrooms free for the use of the shearers. I'm sure that the greater majority of small farmers would prefer even this to going to the expense of erecting and furnishing new bedrooms to be used for two weeks in the year by their shearers.