Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient: Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Vol. 32, No. 12. 1969.

Social Credit Replies

page 7

Social Credit Replies

A Labour Party candidate, Charles Troughton, who has yet 10 show that he can win a place in Parliament, has set himself up in Salient as an expert on Parliamentary Government and a critic of Social Credit's concept of it.

Says Mr. Troughton: "Either Mr. Cracknell and the Social Credit movement have no true notion of what Parliament is and how it really works, or else they do know and have rejected it in private, but not in public".

The Social Credit Leader. Mr. Cracknell, is Well placed to know how Parliament works. Apart from his experience as an M.P. through two sessions, he is a member of four select committees, including the important Statutes Revision and External Affairs Committees.

Mr. Cracknell has noted that in committee discussions of changes to proposed legislation, rigid party lines are often very loosely observed or even discarded. He and the Social Credit League simply propose that this commonsense and business-like way of framing the nation's laws should also characterise Parliamentary debates.

Mr. Troughton, how ever, argues apparently that no matter what the merits of a case, Parliamentary debate and voting must proceed on rigid party lines (naturally, National Labour ines. Mr. Cracknell, by showing strict impartiality during the 1968 sesion (voting in divisions on an equal number of occasions with National and Labour) highlighted the absurdity of a system based on the assumption that on particular issues, one side is wholly right and the other wholly wrong.

The tragedy of the present tight two-party system is that in public the business of the nation appears 10 be conducted in a fashion that appears increasingly absurd in an age when efficient and businesslike Government is both needed and demanded. Parliament loses the respect of the public when it seems to be deciding isues on grounds of political expediency instead of the merits of the case being debated.

In fact, of course. Government now makes no pretence that Parliament is a decisionmaking body: the Deputy-Prime Minister. Mr. Marshall, explicitly slated in the House that it wasn't and Mr. Cracknell alone among the 80 members challenged his view.

Mr. Troughton does not seem to realise that political parlies can exist and perform useful functions without developing into the over-rigid combination that existed in New Zealand until Social Credit upset it. The United States Congress for example, manages to legislate for the world's most important democracy with a very loose party party system.

The Social Credit League in Alberta has governed that province in businesslike fashion for nearly 40 years without the dubious benefits of a rigid party system. (A small opposition has always existed, but it changes in party composition over the years.)

How would New Zealand Parliamentary affairs be conducted under a Social Credit Government? Mr. Cracknell's actions and statements have made it clear that the status of Parliament would be upgraded both in fad and appearance.

If Mr. Troughton does not believe it possible for open debate with conflicting viewpoints to exist within a political organisation, he should attend the next annual Conference of the Social Credit League. This assembly is the only existing New Zealand body that is truly representative of all sections of the community, and yet which has real decision-making power.

Far from weakening Parliamentary Government, grass roots democracy is being kept alive in New Zealand by the vigour of the Social Credit League. Social Creditors have not the silghtest doubt that debates in a Serial Credit-dominated Parliament would be just as vigorous as in their Conferences, and real decisions would be made. Parliament would no longer be a mere 'rubber stamp".

As in America, the administration of the day would have to seek the support [unclear: o.] dissident Members if it wished smooth passage for legislation Cabinet's present arbitrary power would be checked, be cause different majorities would be required for different items of legislation. And much of the real debate, now submerged behind the closed doors of caucuses, committees, and cabinet, would be in public.

Mr. Troughton makes a bad mistake when he, says the structure of the Social Credit League does not differ from National or Labour significantly. There is a major difference: the League is effectively a coalition of 16 regional Social Credit organisations, with a high degree of autonomy.

This simple fact is a built-in check on the development of over-centralisation within the League. It is an indication of the different son of politics—a politics of variety and vigour—which would replace the present sterile "I'm right, you're wrong because you're on the other side" kind of politics.

(By Stuart Dickson, President VUW Social Credit Club, Research Officer, N.Z. Social Credit League.)