Mr. Chairman, I wish to move as an amendment—

Clause 4 deals with the question of patients by consent, those patients who have voluntarily submitted themselves for treatment, and provision is made here for where the superintendent is not satisfied that the patient concerned is fully aware of the conditions under which the application has been made. Sir, we have no problem with the first part of this clause. Our suggestion is to improve subsection (2), and that is the object of the first amendment. Subsection (2) says that the superintendent shall within seven days after the admission of a patient under subsection (1), forward to the magistrate of the district in which the institution in question is situated, a copy of the relevant application and a report on the condition of the patient. We on this side of the House wish to move the amendment that after the word “situated” the words “and to the Secretary” should be included, thereby implying that after seven days the superintendent will send a report to the magistrate and also that a copy of the report will go to the Secretary. We feel that where in these cases there is any element of doubt, every effort should be made to ensure that the patient receives the utmost consideration. While it is not the intention to overload the Secretary with an unnecessary number of reports of this nature, we feel that cases where patients are not aware of the terms of their applications, should be referred both to the magistrate and the Secretary.

As far as the second portion of the amendment is concerned—it deals with subsection (3)—we suggest that the magistrate of the district in question may informally visit the patient concerned, and may at any time investigate the circumstances under which the patient was admitted to the institution or is being or was detained therein. Our amendment suggests just a change of wording to make it quite clear. We think that it is essential that instead of it being permissive in so far as subparagraph (c) is concerned, i.e. that he may report his findings, the magistrate shall report his findings under paragraphs (a) and (b) to the Secretary. We feel that to have the last paragraph of the clause on a permissive basis, might not be in the best interests of the patient. That is why we submit that the word “shall” will be in the interests of the patient.

Mr. Chairman, this clause refers to the protection of the rights of the person, and that function is given to the court and its officials. In a case such as this one it is essential that the magistrate should be aware of the admission of the patient. That is all that is of importance here. It is not necessary that the Secretary should be informed. I should say that although we may have to contend with manpower problems and administrative red tape, the hon. member need not have the least fear that the magistrate would not know exactly what to do in a case such as this. I think that in this case, where the court is being entrusted with functions and the court has to carry out those functions, we may leave it to the magistrate to fulfil these initial functions. Under these circumstances I cannot accept the amendment which the hon. member proposed in this regard.

†In so far as clause 4(3) is concerned, the hon. member must realize that this is a discretionary power that is delegated to the magistrate. He does not differ with me as far as 4(3)(a) and (b) are concerned, that the magistrate should have a discretionary power, but now he wants the magistrate to be forced. He must—it should not be in his discretion—inform the Secretary in a case where clause 4(3)(c) is applicable.

*In this respect I am returning to exactly the same thing. In this respect, too, we should not impose unnecessary administrative duties on the magistrate. Over many years it has always been my experience—I never found any departure from this—that magistrates are responsible people who know when they should inform the Secretary with regard to a patient of this nature. Hundreds of cases may be involved at the same time, and if the magistrate finds anything unusual in any of those cases, I am quite sure that he will report that case, as was always done in the past. There have never been cases where these powers were abused or where there was negligence. I am therefore very sorry, but I cannot accept these two amendments.

Amendments negatived.

Clause agreed to.

Clause 25:

Mr. Chairman, I wish to move as an amendment—

I notice that the hon. the Minister too has given notice of an amendment. My amendment calls for a report to be rendered every year instead of only annually for the first three years and thereafter in the fifth year and then every five years. The hon. Minister has gone to the extent of meeting the situation by substituting “three years” for “every five years”. A great deal of play has been made by the hon. member for Newcastle of the fact that there have been patients, albeit patients retained as President’s patients, whom he suggested had been cured but had not been released. That is a concern which he gives voice to because he apparently is aware of occasions where this has taken place. Our concern, on the other hand, is that there should not be any “forgotten men”. Whilst I admit that having these reports every three years is better than having them every five years, I do think that there is no harm in having them done annually. As I have said in my Second Reading speech on this Bill, in many cases it is purely a formal report because the condition of a patient is very well known to the superintendent. On the other hand, the fact that the report is made annually is a matter of some comfort to the patient’s family and of a certain sense of security in the minds of the public. Therefore there should not be, as has been suggested by the hon. member for Newcastle, cases where people are really “forgotten men”. That is one aspect of the matter. I will now refer to the other aspect.

I introduced this amendment because I have had discussions with psychiatrists on the subject and they feel quite strongly on this issue, despite the fact that representations have been made by the association or whatever institution psychiatrists belong to. Nevertheless, something that is in the minds of some psychiatrists on this matter is that where the superintendent does render such a report, more particularly if the hon. the Minister is going to insist on its taking place every three years, such report should contain a report from a medical officer in some other institution or place who shall then examine the patient for the purposes of such report.

That obviously refers to a medical officer of an institution in terms of this Bill. In other words, he merely invites a colleague from another institution or hospital, wherever it may be, to concur in his thinking on the matter. It is very possible that a superintendent who has spent many years at an institution can get stale. Very often it becomes merely a formality for him, where in his mind he has already formed a conclusion. This is not a reflection on the superintendent; it is just a matter of human nature because, after all, these are not the easiest cases in the world to deal with. Very often a second opinion may be of great value and assistance and be in the interests of the patient. Our objective here is not to be critical of the method of administration, nor is it critical of the terms of the clause; its whole purpose is to bring about an inbuilt sense of confidence and as far as possible to provide the maximum protection for the patient because, as I have said, with the new approach to mental health one wants the public to feel secure and to be reassured that no person will at any time suffer through being a forgotten case or the cause of a family making an application to a judge-in-chambers or to an open court to inquire whether the patient is still suffering from a mental illness to a degree that justifies his being certified or detained. I believe that with these two provisions—firstly, the more frequent issuing of reports on the individual and, secondly, the inbuilt security of a second opinion—we will have gone very far indeed in ensuring that there will not be a case, as has been suggested, of a forgotten man being certified and lost to the world.

Mr. Chairman, at the start let me say that we must all realize that the hon. member is referring to chronic cases of mental illness. If, instead of debating we revert to facts, the hon. member must realize that after eight years many of the chronic cases are really burnt out. These burnt-out cases, as we call them, are seen daily by the nursing personnel and at least once per month by the psychiatrists. I realize that there were perhaps State President cases which were released too soon. That is why the five year provision is there. We accepted it at the time and it has worked well all these years. I myself have mentioned the fact that we are moving on to new ground as far as the treatment of psychiatric patients and their detention are concerned. That is why I am prepared to meet the hon. member halfway. We must gradually move in this new direction. That is why I say that three years for the time being is perhaps a better way in which to move gradually into the new era.

As far as the medical superintendent of the specific institution where the patient has to be tested, is concerned, the hon. member talked about staleness. I have sympathy for what he said, but I do not think his argument stands up to reality and to the facts, because it is not a question of staleness here. After many years it is actually more difficult for a practitioner, a psychiatrist, from another institution to come and diagnose and decide on a patient whom he sees only for the first time. At the same time, there are safety measures built in because the boards that consider these cases are usually composed of more than one doctor; there are also psychiatrists and the other members of hospital boards. So, that need not worry the hon. member. As I have said at the start, we do not want to over-burden our people with administrative tasks. That is a very real problem that has to be considered. Therefore I shall have to leave it at that. I can meet him half-way by changing the five years to three years if he feels strongly about that. For the rest, I think it must remain as it is for the time being. As far as another doctor’s opinion is concerned when a patient is finally to be released, I think I have already answered that request. It is something that is not conducive to good ethics either amongst the various doctors that work in State institutions or amongst private psychiatrists, who sometimes are in opposition to other psychiatrists. I think we had better leave it at that. I therefore move my amendment—

Mr. Chairman, under the circumstances I am prepared to accept the amendment of the hon. the Minister and to withdraw mine.

Amendments proposed by Mr. H. Miller, with leave, withdrawn.

Amendment proposed by the Minister of Health agreed to.

Clause, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 45:

Mr. Chairman, I move as an amendment—

This clause does not deal with persons in an institution, but with persons who are detained in dwellings and who are looked after there. It is for this reason that I think we should be extra careful in these cases. Subsection (1) states:

I suggest that the magistrate must go and visit the patient after a complaint has been lodged. Although this is an enabling subsection empowering the magistrate to go, I am not satisfied. A report may come in about a child who is being kept in a room with a chain around its leg. We have read that this sort of thing does happen. We cannot take a chance. The magistrate must go and see what has happened. The enabling clause here gives permission to do so but it is my contention that the magistrate who has received the report shall go and see this person who is being detained as a mentally ill patient in the private dwelling. For all we know medical attention may not have been given and this child may have been lying there for months. A report is sent in and under those circumstances I feel that the magistrate must go to the dwelling and see what is going on. If he does go, I say he must go, and he sees what is happening it is not sufficient to say that he “may” take steps which he deems fit. He “must” take steps to make sure that the report is not only fully investigated, but actually institutes action to make sure that this child is neither cruelly, wrongfully treated or being neglected.

Mr. Chairman, this subsection also merely empowers the magistrate to enter such a dwelling; and it is in his discretion whether he will do so or not. This was also the case in the past. The hon. member now wants the magistrate to be compelled to investigate each case personally. Now I wish to put it to him that we must also be reasonable and appreciate the discretionary ability of the magistrate. If he feels it is necessary, he may go. If it is not necessary at all, he does not have to go. However, the magistrate has other obligations to carry out. In subsection (3) the hon. member will notice that the magistrate has to report monthly to the Secretary on the fitness of the person in charge and the dwelling where such a patient is kept. Now the hon. member wants to place that additional obligation on him of having to investigate every little complaint personally. I think one must be reasonable because magistrates have many other duties to fulfil, and because we, on account of our limited manpower, have to place too heavy a burden on these people as it is by requiring them to fulfil many of the local obligations of departments. Since the magistrate has these other obligations to fulfil, and since he is a responsible official and his integrity is usually beyond all doubt, I honestly feel that we should not place this burden upon magistrates at this stage. I feel the hon. member should appreciate why I cannot accept his amendment at this stage.

Mr. Chairman, I am not satisfied with the hon. the Minister’s reply. I think that if there are no other people to do the investigations, the magistrates must do them. It is the magistrate’s duty to do it, irrespective of the other work he may have to do. It is my contention that the welfare of such a person detained in a dwelling, because he is mentally ill, takes precedence. That is how I feel about it. It is my own feeling that abuses by those in charge of these people may take place. The hon. the Minister must remember that the persons who look after the mentally ill are paid for it, and we expect in return for the fees they are getting for keeping these people, that they must do the job properly. I am not satisfied that the monthly report by the magistrate will include a visit to the residence. Subsection (3) reads:

In practice, this might quite easily mean two months may elapse from the time the magistrate or his appointee goes to the dwelling until the subsequent visit. For instance, the magistrate may go on the first of the month—so he had done his duty for that month. He may not go again until the 31st of the following month; then he has indeed gone once a month but with an interval of two months. Anything can happen to that child or adult in that period of two months. I am not going to pursue the matter further but I wonder if the hon. the Minister will not be good enough to reconsider this amendment and perhaps change it in the Other Place.

Mr. Chairman, I think the hon. member has perhaps an argument there, but, according to his printed amendment, the magistrate is left with no option even to appoint perhaps a medical practitioner to go and investigate and then report back to him. So he will agree that, seeing that there is no option contained in his amendment, it is impossible for me to accept his amendment as it stands now. But if he is prepared to let us discuss this, I might consider it now that he has produced this other argument of the magistrate perhaps delegating his power or appointing a medical practitioner to go and investigate whether there is anything wrong. In that case I think he has a point. Perhaps, in the Other Place, we may then try to amend this clause in the way he has suggested.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased that the hon. the Minister has consented to give this matter further consideration. I would be very happy if he could amend this clause. I would be satisfied if the magistrate would then be able to delegate that power to some other person. I would be very happy with that. The Minister has given us the assurance that he will do this, and with that assurance I shall withdraw my amendment.

I shall look at the matter again.

Yes; I understand your position.

Amendments, with leave, withdrawn.

Clause agreed to.

Clause 47:

Mr. Chairman, this is a matter which concerns the establishment of hospital boards. In this clause the hon. the Minister has made provision for only three persons to be appointed to a hospital board. As the House well knows—and the Minister knows this better than most of us—these boards are going to operate in very large institutions in most cases. The work that these three board members will have to do is going to be very extensive. In addition, these three people who are going to be appointed to such a board are going to be specialists in one or other profession. It is suggested that if possible one shall be a medical practitioner and another a lawyer. Medical practitioners are, as the hon. the Minister admitted a moment ago, very busy people, and so are lawyers. They at times may be too busy to visit institutions and they may also be very busy at the time when a hospital board meeting is called. It is my contention that three people are insufficient to serve efficiently on a hospital board. When you come to think of it, Sir, they have to keep an eye on the finances of the hospital; they have to see to the buildings; they have to see to the grounds; they have to see to welfare and complaints that come from the staff and the patients; they have at least to take an active interest in the hospital and its wards.

Feeding too.

Yes, there are the kitchens and all that sort of thing, but I am not going to go into detail. How is it possible for three people to do all this, especially when two of them are very busy people, one a lawyer and the other a medical practitioner? That is why I say it is necessary in most cases to have a far greater number serving efficiently on a hospital board. The Minister has been good enough to consider this point and he suggests that we say that “up to five people” may be appointed to a board. I would be pleased to hear from the Minister why he says “from three to five persons” instead of agreeing to my suggestion that we have five people on a board.

I therefore move as an amendment—

Order! I wish to draw the hon. member’s attention to clause 48, which reads as follows—

The hon. member’s amendment involves an increase in the number of members appointed to serve on a board. I am unable to accept the amendment as it would also involve an increase in expenditure, requiring the State President’s recommendation. I must add that I can accept the amendment if it comes from the Minister, but not if it comes from the hon. member. It is therefore out of order.

Well, Sir, as a result of this excellent detective work I must withdraw my amendment and I shall agree, under the circumstances, to the Minister’s amendment.

It is not necessary for the hon. member to withdraw his amendment, as I have not accepted it. I have ruled it out of order.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to remove one misunderstanding. The members of the board have not got anything to do with the administration of the hospital. They have no jurisdiction in that regard. They only attend to the patients. There must be clarity in the hon. member’s mind as far as the functions of the board members are concerned.

*But in the first place I should like to mention that these people are volunteers. Therefore provision is made for a minimum of three persons, because at the smaller institutions one is sometimes unable to obtain five persons. There must be a minimum of three persons, but we can have five persons in the case of large institutions where the arguments the hon. member raised, do apply. I move—

Amendment agreed to.

Clause, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 49:

Mr. Chairman, may I ask for your ruling in this case in view of the ruling which you gave during the discussion which took place on clause 47? Would I be in order in moving my amendment and speaking on it?

Yes, the hon. member may move his amendment.

Then I formally move the amendment as printed in my name—

The intention of my amendment is to provide that visits by the hospital boards to institutions shall be carried out monthly instead of every two months. Sir, I believe it is a very important function of the members of the hospital board that they should see the patients who have been put under the care of the institution, and I believe that it would be to the advantage both of the patient and of the relatives of the patient and also a source of comfort to know that regular inspections take place and regular opportunities exist for patients to place before the hospital board any representations which they wish to make. As the clause stands now, it says that the board shall visit any institution in respect of which it has been appointed at least once every two months. We suggest that it should be once every month. Then the clause goes on to say—

During the Second Reading debate yesterday it was pointed out by many speakers on both sides of the House that there was an acute shortage of psychiatrists, and it was also pointed out that in some State institutions there were no psychiatrists on the staff due to this acute shortage. I feel that under those circumstances, which are not likely to be rectified in the near future because psychiatrists do not just grow on trees and it would take a long time to overcome this backlog of psychiatrists, it would be desirable for this facility to exist so that patients will know that they have this opportunity. We know, from what the hon. member for Rosettenville has said, that in the composition of the hospital boards it is considered desirable, where practicable, to have a medical man on the board, and I believe that it is important that this medical man who serves on the hospital board should have the opportunity every month, if necessary, of investigating any complaints or representations which may be forthcoming from any patient in the institution.

Sir, this, too, is an amendment which I find very difficult to accept since we are dealing here with the practical execution of an exceptionally difficult task by people who offer their services voluntarily. That is really the main idea behind this. The hon. member rightly mentioned a few things on which I agree with him. If it had been proved in the past that this provision had given rise to patients being neglected, I would have agreed with the hon. members, but under the new dispensation we believe that we shall have a better integration of doctors and patients and a more effective interaction among doctors and various patients; that the ordinary doctors will visit the patients daily and that we should not place this board, which consists of volunteers, under the obligation to meet at least once a month. As it is we ask them to meet at least once every two months. I do not want us to find ourselves in a position at some later stage where we shall not have any board members at all. I am just mentioning this. It falls within the discretion of the board to meet at intervals of less than two months, and I think we must leave it at that for the present. I do not really have anything more to say in this respect. The only thing is that I do not think that it is desirable to effect this amendment at the present time and I think that during the discussion of the next clause, on which an amendment is also to be moved, I shall indicate to the hon. member why I have come to this decision. However, I cannot accept this amendment.

Amendment negatived.

Clause agreed to.

Clause 51:

Mr. Chairman, I move as an amendment—

We await the Minister’s comments.

I have some sympathy with the hon. member for Jeppes. I do not think he will find in front of him any amendments by me. I thought about that last night and this morning, and I think he has something here. Seeing that the hospital board does visit the hospital every two months, we can easily include here this compulsion on them also to hold a meeting every two months, and not necessarily leave it open to them to hold meetings whenever they want to. So I think I can meet him half way there again and make it at least every two months. Then they can hold meetings in between if they consider it necessary.

If the hon. the Minister will be good enough to move that, I will withdraw my amendment.

Then I move the following amendment—

In the circumstances I withdraw my amendment.

Amendment proposed by Mr. H. Miller, with leave, withdrawn.

Amendment proposed by the Minister of Health agreed to.

Clause, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 53:

I do not want to create the impression of there being a “toe-nadering” between myself and the Minister but I must say that the amendment he has moved more than meets the situation. The drafting, I think, is much clearer and I am quite happy with the leave of the Committee to withdraw my amendment and to support the amendment which the hon. the Minister, I understand, intends to move.

Order! The hon. member need not withdraw his amendment because it has not been moved.

I am very pleased to hear that the hon. member for Jeppes is willing to learn something. I think he is very wise, because we have really tried to round off more effectively—by availing ourselves of the particular efficiency and linguistic ability of my department—the amendment which he proposed to move and which contains a principle which we support. I therefore move my amendment—

1. (a) it is the unanimous resolution of the board; and
2. (b) it has been confirmed by the Minister, whose decision in this regard shall be final.

Amendments agreed to.

Clause, as amended, agreed to.

House Resumed:

Bill reported with amendments.

Mr. Chairman, when we debated this measure at the Second Reading the hon. the Deputy Minister of Transport motivated this clause with the justifiable argument that fly by night travel agents had in many cases let travellers down by being unable to fulfil their commitments after having accepted the money for a booking. We argued, however, that this clause went much further than the mere protection of travellers against unscrupulous travel agents. The principle has now been accepted and we accept the principle as expounded by the hon. the Deputy Minister that such protection should be granted. In order to clarify and to limit the protection provided by clause 2 to those persons whom the hon. the Deputy Minister himself stated were the object of protection, I move the following amendment—

1. (a) any company, society or organization which satisfies the commission that it intends to arrange a charter flight for the benefit of its own employees or members and their families; or
2. (b) any person, company or organization which deposits with the commission such moneys or guarantees as may be required by the commission to ensure fulfilment of all obligations offered by such person, company or organization.

If accepted, as I hope it will be, this amendment will provide in principle that authority will in fact be granted to genuine organizations such as chambers of commerce or other associations which offer charter flights for the benefit of their own members. They will still have to apply. The hon. Minister made great play of the fact that all they had to do was to write a letter. Our objection was not that they had to write a letter but to what would be the answer to that letter. This amendment, subsection (a) of the proposed section 2A(1), lays down for the guidance of the commission that a company, society or organization which satisfies the commission—and I emphasize “which satisfies”—will be a body which if it applies will normally obtain such an authority. In other words, it is a guide to the commission and it indicates in what circumstances the authority provided for in this new section 2A will be granted. However, it leaves the discretion with the commission as it is in the clause here and as adopted in principle. Subsection (b) provides that where there is any doubt the commission may again use its discretion as to an amount which it itself shall determine and which guarantees fulfilment of the obligations of a travel organization. The third proposed new subsection, the one dealt with by my hon. colleague for Kensington, deals with advertising or news stories in publications dealing with such flights in other countries, for instance the London-Venice flight which I quoted yesterday from The Sunday Tribune of March 4th, or the London-New York flights. Such flights will therefore be excluded from the prohibition of this clause—in other words, flights originating and terminating outside the Republic. I do not want to argue this at length at this stage, but I will give the hon. the Deputy Minister the opportunity to indicate whether he is prepared to accept this amendment which in fact sets out what he said this clause intended to achieve. I hope that he will accept it.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Durban Point was good enough to give me a copy of his amendment a few moments ago. I have had the opportunity to study it thoroughly, but for reasons which I am going to point out it is unfortunately not possible for me to accept it. In the first place the member stated, quite rightly, that this was purely a matter of an application to the National Transport Commission and therefore a reply to a letter, and then he said very clearly that it would be within the discretion of the commission. If we were to do this, it would be mere duplication, because as the proposed section reads at present, it is entirely within the discretion of the National Transport Commission to approve such an application after receipt of the letter to which the hon. member referred, and to issue such an authority. To elaborate on that and to accept the amendment proposed by the hon. member, would simply amount to an extension of that. It would serve no purpose, no purpose whatsoever. Exactly the same goes for point (b). The hon. member stated very clearly that he left it to the discretion of the Transport Commission. In terms of the amending Bill which we have before us, the National Transport Board already has the right to make regulations for arranging and providing for these matters. They may, within their discretion, ask in the regulations for the very thing the hon. member has requested in his amendment. This is once again an instance of pure duplication, and it is totally unnecessary. It can already be done under the proposed clause.

As regards the first point which the hon. member made in his amendment, I want to point out that under this Bill the National Transport Commission as such has no authority in countries abroad over flights originating and terminating outside the borders of the Republic. They have absolutely no authority over such flights. Therefore that argument falls away completely. The objections raised by the hon. member for Durban Point, and those raised by the hon. member for Kensington during the Second Reading debate, fall away completely. In any case, there is no jurisdiction over those flights and nothing can therefore be done about them. I want to make it very clear that this clause contains one single principle. Up to the present the position was that a person or organization advertised a flight first, any flight, and a licence or authority for that flight was only obtained later. Now the position is just being reversed: in other words, authority must first be obtained from the National Transport Commission and subsequent to that the flight may be advertised and a licence may be obtained for undertaking that flight, etc. The only difference as a result of the position brought about by this clause, is that that procedure is inverted. Instead of advertising first and then obtaining authorization, prior authorization must from now on be obtained from the N.T.C.; subsequent to that one may advertise that such authority has been obtained, and then the flight may be undertaken. That is the only principle which is involved here. Unfortunately the hon. member’s amendment will make absolutely no difference to the existing clause. *

Mr. Chairman, I am amazed at the attitude of the hon. the Deputy Minister. He advanced reasons here for the necessity of this particular clause. But now that we are putting the hon. the Deputy Minister’s sincerity to the test by embodying the same reasons in an amendment, he refuses to accept that amendment. In other words, after the hon. the Deputy Minister has advanced reasons for the amendment of the Act, he now refuses to accept those reasons in an amendment. Let me just deal with the last point first. The hon. the Deputy Minister says that this Bill does not apply in countries abroad. Of course it is applicable to advertisements of flights in countries abroad which appear in publications in South Africa. How can he say, therefore, that this clause does not apply outside our borders? If a newspaper here in South Africa writes about a foreign flight without having obtained the necessary authority from the commission, it contravenes the Act in terms of this clause. Then it is an offence and it may be sentenced to a fine of R1 000. The hon. the Deputy Minister knows so little about his own Bill that he stands up here and says that this clause has nothing to do with overseas flights. Indeed, it does not have anything to do with the flights as such, but it does have to do with advertisements or any newspaper articles in connection with such flights.

†The issue is that, when the hon. the Deputy Minister asks for powers and tells us the reasons why he does so, and when we want to circumscribe and lay down the conditions under which that authority shall be granted, he immediately refuses to circumscribe the powers. In other words, he wants a blank cheque. What does he want a blank cheque for? Why is he not prepared to place in the Bill an indication to the commission under which circumstances, as the amendment reads, it shall grant an authority? That leaves the exercising of discretion by the commission to two issues, namely whether the organization is a genuine organization and, secondly, whether the guarantees it asks for are sufficient. In other words, it limits the discretion of the commission to two fields: the genuineness of the applicant and the extent of the guarantees. But the hon. the Minister does not want that limitation. He wants total power without any limitation upon he conditions under which the commission can accept or reject. If the commission does not like a publication, a company or a travel agent, he can simply say: “I am not giving you permission”. This amendment however, would limit the commission, if it were a travel agent, to laying down guarantees which are required, and if it were another organization, to being satisfied that that organization was catering only for its own members. In other words, we are trying to circumscribe the power of the commission to refuse authority. We are trying to limit it to the cases which the hon. the Minister quoted. If he refuses this then we are entitled to question the bona fides of his explanation for the need for this, because he is refusing exactly what he is asking for. I do not want to question the bona fides of the hon. the Deputy Minister; I do question whether he is perhaps being misled in that he is being advised to reject this because the motive is something else than what we have been told is the motive of this clause. If it were not so, why does the Minister refuse to limit it? If there were not some other motive, why should he refuse to circumscribe the powers of the commission? Why should he want a greater power than that for which he says this Bill is designed? The hon. the Deputy Minister has now opened up a completely different field, because we are now forced to consider what the real motives are behind this measure. The National Transport Commission is bound by law to prevent over-competition and in practice, whether we like it or not, it is the protector of the South African Railways on the ground, and of the South African Airways in the air. It must be by the very nature of its purpose in life. Its purpose in life is to protect the South African Airways as far as this Bill is concerned and to protect licensed carriers from excessive competition by other carriers. Therefore the mental approach of the commission is one of “is this going to create competition?” That is not the object of this clause. This clause is to protect the public from exploitation by unscrupulous agents, but in the way in which it is worded here, it is in fact not simply protecting the public, but opening the door to a decision to refuse the right to advertise a flight on the grounds that it will lead to competition rather than that it will lead to exploitation of the public. That, I suggest, is in fact the motive which the hon. the Minister is trying to hide here, because if it is not, let him stand up and tell us why on earth he is not prepared to circumscribe the conditions under which the commission must grant or refuse a certificate to advertise a flight. With all the protection in the world for the public in the form of guarantees, which we in our amendment accept are necessary, the Minister says he is not prepared to limit the commission. To say that this is simply superfluous, is not so. It is not “oorbodig” and it is not simply extending what is in the Bill. What is in the Bill is a blank cheque to refuse anybody permission to advertise. What is in the amendment is not duplication of that, but a limitation of that within the principle which has been accepted at the Second Reading.

While I am on my feet, let me raise one point which I think we should also clarify. This concerns those who will be affected by this Bill. In the English version we find that an agent is affected by this clause “unless he is the holder of a licence under this Act authorizing such conveyance or is the authorized agent of such a holder”. In the Afrikaans it reads:

As I understand it, “gevolmagtigde” is a representative, a person with the full authority of the licensee, whereas an agent is not a person with the full authority of the licensee. He is an agent authorized to act in the sale of tickets, while a “gevolmagtigde” is a fully authorized representative. I ask the hon. the Minister to clarify which of the two meanings, the English or the Afrikaans, will be applied here.

Sir, coming back to the amendment and leaving the aspect of publication aside, I would like to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister to tell us whether he has in fact any objection to the people of South Africa knowing what it costs to fly from London to New York. Because obviously, an overseas travel magazine, or our own Travel and Trade magazine in South Africa, when they publish an article, cannot go running to the Minister every time to get permission to publish for instance overseas fares. So they will be committing an offence. Now what is the objection to the people of South Africa knowing what overseas flights cost? Because they will not be able to know. This is an iron curtain, a curtain of censorship. Are we now to live as people live in Russia, cut off from the truth of what is happening in the outside world; almost every overseas publication dealing with travel which wants to write for the information of South Africans will first have to come to the National Transport Commission. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I want to ask the hon. member for Durban Point in all fairness why he wants to see his amendment written into the Act specifically with regard to the few cases he stipulates here, and not with regard to the many other cases one can call to mind? If it is to be, as he puts it, for the benefit of employees or their families, why not include members of a sports club to which he belongs? Why include only certain matters in his amendment?

It deals with employees or members of the organization.

Yes, but the hon. member may still add dozens of other bodies and persons that fall into the same category.

Such as?

If a person, company or organization approaches the National Transport Commission with the guarantees which he proposes in subsection (2)(b) of his amendment, guarantees in respect of obligations, deposits and moneys, does he for one moment think that the Commission will not give its approval? That is exactly what the legislation envisages, which is what the hon. the Deputy Minister said. Now why does the hon. member want to insert the obvious into the Bill with regard to certain specific bodies and persons only and not with regard to others? Once again I want to put it very clearly to the hon. member that I cannot see where in this legislation he finds all these sinister motives, for example that we allegedly wanted to prohibit people from going overseas. Why should we do that? On the contrary, we are in fact trying to make the South African public more aware of air travel. We want them to make use of the comfort and the timesaving aspect of air travel. That is why the National Transport Commission would like to encourage this. But the Commission and this Government have an obligation towards the public to protect them. If things were to happen—as did happen in the past under this self same Department of Transport with regard to other activities—involving people making money in a dishonest and improper manner, then it would not be the hon. member for Durban Point and the members on his side of the House who would have to endure the public’s criticisms; then the blame would fall on the hon. the Minister and the Government. Then they would sit back and look on with pleasure. Then they would go further and try to make political capital out of the situation. Now I want to tell the hon. member this: It has been proved that the public has been misled by such advertisements in the past. People took chances which did not come off. No proper arrangements were made and people ran off with the money of others. The Minister must do something about this. What must he do? He is doing exactly what the hon. member for Durban Point has, in one way or another, been trying to say all afternoon, and that is to prescribe in the Bill what has to be done. These agents must only do what is prescribed in the Bill, before they may start advertising or before they may compromise people or take their deposits, and go to the National Transport Commission. Then they only have to say, “This is what we want to arrange. This is our intention. These are the guarantees we offer. These guarantees enable us to give the assurance that the public’s money which we take from them, will be protected. Grant us permission to arrange such a flight.” Why will the National Transport Commission not do so? This is exactly what this legislation envisages.

Without any limits?

No, the National Transport Commission always has a discretion. I think it is utterly impossible for us in this House to foresee all possibilities. At the moment the hon. member opposite can see only a few. That is why there are regulations in terms of which these matters may be regulated. I think the hon. member must see the matter in perspective. I think he has certain prejudices in this regard. He thinks the South African Airways wants to eliminate competition. That is not so. The South African Airways likes to have people support it, but the South African Airways also realizes the value of people being air travel conscious. Therefore they are not of the opinion which the hon. member for Durban Point ascribes to them, i.e. that they want to prevent people from flying.

Mr. Chairman, as usual, the hon. member for Parow seems to have got things the wrong way around. I want to suggest to him that if he wants to widen the effect of the amendment of the hon. member for Durban Point, I am sure that that hon. member will be only too pleased to have his amendment widened. I am sure, however, that he will not get any support from the hon. the Deputy Minister. But we shall support him. He says that we are stating the obvious, and he says that the obvious does not even need stating. Why does he not take a good look at the proposed new section 2A? There is nothing obvious about that. What is obvious, if anything, is that it is an all-embracing provision that can be used in some very strange ways. Hence the reason for my hon. colleague’s amendment. When he talks about the discretion of the National Transport Commission, I may say that we have heard from the hon. the Deputy Minister that regulations are going to be promulgated to deal with this matter. We do not know what the regulations are, and that hon. member does not know what they are. He is prepared blithely to accept whatever may be produced by way of regulations. All I can tell him is that we are not prepared to do that.

Sir, returning to the hon. the Deputy Minister, I wish that he would simply study clause 2 of this Bill and take away certain words that are not essential for placing one interpretation upon it. If he does that—and I hope he will have a look at it now—it can read—

Is that clear to him? The hon. the Deputy Minister was remarkably shy yesterday afternoon when he replied to the Second Reading debate. We had put a number of very pertinent points to him and somehow he failed to answer us. One of the things I wanted to know, and I reminded him of it right at the end, was whether the definition of an air service was confined to South Africa, or whether it applied to air services anywhere in the world. He heard the question, but he was not prepared to answer it. He could have answered it very easily; he had all the time in the world. We must ask him again: Does the definition “Air services” apply to air services anywhere in the world? Do not let him come with any story about the National Transport Commission only having jurisdiction over air services in South Africa or those that terminate or originate here. He knows that is nonsense because he knows that that has nothing to do with the interpretation of the new clause 2 with which I am dealing. Sir, perhaps I can help him. When he replied to the Second Reading debate yesterday, he put a few questions, loaded questions, to my colleague, the hon. member for Salt River, and he expected him to give “Yes” or “No” answers. As I say, I think they were loaded questions. But in all sincerity I want to put some genuine questions to him, to which he can reply by nodding or shaking his head, about the application of the proposed new section 2A. Sir, would it be permissible in terms of the proposed new section 2A for The Cape Times to carry an advertisement by a non-scheduled airline operating, say, from Swaziland to Luxemburg without the authority of our National Transport Commission, i.e. without The Cape Times first having the authority of the National Transport Commission? That is a simple question. I wonder if he knows the answer. You see, Sir, I only have three speaking opportunities on this clause and if every time I have to ask for individual answers to these questions, I shall not be able to put all my questions. Can he tell us, just by way of a nod, whether The Cape Times would be able to publish an advertisement by a non-scheduled airline operating a service from Swaziland overseas without first obtaining the authority of the National Transport Commission? Can he tell us?

The answer is a lemon.

Sir, there is no reaction at all, and this can only lead me to believe that the hon. the Deputy Minister does not even know the provisions of his own Bill. This is the simplest example. I have a few more examples to put to him.

I will reply later; carry on.

Why cannot the hon. the Deputy Minister say “Yes” or “No” now? Can he not say “Yes”?

Sit down.

No, I am not going to give up my speaking opportunity.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 30(2).

House Resumed:

Progress reported and leave granted to sit again.

The House proceeded to the consideration of private members’ business.

Mr. Speaker, I move—

Sir, I want to make it clear at the outset that while the motion merely asks the Government to consider the advisability of holding at least two sessions of Parliament in any normal year, i.e. in years in which no elections are held, I shall argue as strongly as I can that reform in this direction is long overdue. Indeed, when one considers the scope of parliamentary activities today as compared with 20 years or 30 years ago, one might well question how we have come to the stage of governmental development at which we found ourselves without so far having examined this aspect of our parliamentary life. You see, Sir, what we have to examine is whether we as parliamentarians, and Parliament as an institution, can keep pace with modern developments and with the demands being placed upon us. For a moment, before going further, it might be fruitful for us to consider one or two things about the lives of parliamentarians under the present system of one session a year.

One can, certainly if one is in the Opposition, but I believe this is also the case with our colleagues on the Government side, say that our lives very much tend to become a helter-skelter in a crowded five or five and a half months of the year. We have daily group meetings, often meetings at which important aspects of legislation and policy are debated, and very often these group meetings, due to the shortage of time at our disposal, are double-dated. Consequently we find that we would very much like to be present at two group meetings, and sometimes even three, but that cannot be because they are held at the same time. We have our caucuses, not necessarily a daily occurrence, but quite often in the week, and also management meetings as well. Then we must not forget that while we are here, apart from our parliamentary duties, a considerable amount of constituency work comes our way. I need not tell hon. members of this House just how much work lands on our desks. This leads very often, when one thinks of the sitting hours of the House and the crowded schedules we very often have, even if one comes in early in the morning, to us having insufficient time to prepare for debates and very often, I believe, insufficient time really to study the Bills that come before us. I shall deal with this a little later. Then, of course, we have the avalanche of literature that is showered into our boxes every day, a lot of which we can throw away but a lot of which we have to read. We have to keep in touch with goings on in the outside world, through the newspapers, and we have to read journals and other publications that have to do with our particular interests in Parliament. This, as we all know, leaves us with little or no time for what one might refer to as outside life. We find ourselves coming to Parliament in the morning, leaving in the evening—some evenings very late indeed—without really having come into contact with the outside world. We find ourselves, in fact, steeped in what, I believe, is largely an artificial, highly-charged political atmosphere. One must not forget too, that apart from all this, the diligent parliamentarian—there are diligent parliamentarians on both sides—finds that he has to take home an immense amount of work.

I do not know whether this is necessarily the case; I believe it probably is, but I certainly have found that if I want to give serious attention to something, whether it be a Bill or a speech, it is something that I have to do by way of homework. One takes it home in the evening, one works perhaps late on it, perhaps in the early morning and very often over weekends as well.

Why not?

The hon. gentleman asks: “Why not?” I agree with him: Why not? At least for as long as everything, all of our parliamentary activity, is condensed into a comparatively short time. I shall take that thought further. I believe all this raises the question: In these circumstances, can a member of Parliament fairly be expected to render the quality of service that is required of him? I believe the answer is “No”.

I shall come back to a few of these points later, but I should like to say that in moving this motion, what I have in mind is Parliament having at least two sessions per year with the total number of sitting days substantially increased so that Parliament is, in fact, in session for most of the year. Along with that I want to suggest that if we do extend our activities more evenly through the year, we should not sit for five days a week; I think we could quite comfortably follow the example set by other Parliaments elsewhere in the world and sit on four days or in some cases only on three days. Also I believe—and this is not a sop to hon. members who might disagree with me—that if our work is spread more evenly over a longer period, the provisions for leave of absence could well be extended.

I am not unaware of the organizational and administrative problems being posed, but I shall return to them later. All I should like to say now is that these problems cannot be weighed against the problem which is of fundamental and paramount importance to us, i.e. whether Parliament is, in fact, serving the country as best it can.

I want to make one thing quite clear. This is a private member’s motion in the truest sense. This means that the motion as framed and introduced by me is my own and bears no formal or informal connection with my own party, or for that matter with any other party. What I am asking is that we as parliamentarians should examine ourselves and the institution that we serve and establish whether as members of Parliament and as the institution within which we operate, we are building for ourselves the kind of legislative framework within which we can truly serve the best interests of South Africa and its peoples.

I know that I have the tacit, if not the overt, support of many thinking members on both sides of this House. At the same time I want to point out that it would be idle to pretend that there is unanimity among our colleagues on a matter which would, of course, impose a substantial extra burden upon their already heavily weighted lives. Before we go further, let me make one thing quite clear. In everything that I say here this afternoon, the one factor that I have taken into account least is that of the comfort of members of Parliament. I believe we are approaching cross-roads in our parliamentary life and in the parliamentary developments in South Africa, cross-roads at which we shall have to decide whether we are to continue as we are, having at best enthusiastic part-time parliamentarians who are content to come to this House for five or perhaps five and a half months a year, or legislators and public watch-dogs who insist on keeping control over all aspects of Government business for as long a period of the year as they possibly can. If we wish to retain the status quo, we shall be subscribing to a system which, as far as I can judge, has been found to have become outdated in the modern Western world. It is a system that was probably well suited to a largely agrarian community that constituted South Africa at the time of Union and two decades or so after Union. But I believe that retaining the status quo will mean that we cannot measure up to what is required from Parliament in the comparatively sophisticated and complicated world of today.

Apart from the natural development of our economy and the inevitable complexities, including the legislative complexities, that have flown from it, we have—certainly in the last two decades—seen an increasing tendency towards centralization of governmental functions in South Africa, even to the extent that the central Government today has assumed control over matters which formerly fell within the purview of the provincial administrations. Provincial finances, for example, are now largely controlled by this Parliament. Even education has fallen further and further within the ambit of the central Parliament. While we of the United Party—and I believe also the Progressive Party—argue for decentralization as the direction along which our constitutional development should flow, it cannot be doubted that we are much more of a unitary state today than we have ever been before, with the exception of the African homelands for which the Government has provided separate administration but which nevertheless look to the central Government for the vast bulk of their financing. Regardless of whether we continue as a strongly unitary form of government or whether we deflect our course towards federalism, it is clear to me, as I am sure it is clear to every other hon. gentleman in this House, that the guiding factor for a long time to come will be this Parliament as it is established today. It is on this basis that I wish to develop my theme.

Yes, a long time to come; a very long time indeed!

Perhaps I should say at this stage that one of the things that has worried a number of our colleagues, has been the prospect that, should we spread parliamentary activities over the year, Members of Parliament will be called upon to devote the major part of the year to parliamentary work. Consequentially some of them have of course been concerned at the prospect of their not being able to devote at least half a year to their private business pursuits, whether they be farming, professional or business generally. I have tried to comfort them by pointing out that if we have two sessions of Parliament we will also have two recesses, but that does not seem to have got me very far.

And two allowances.

I do not propose to devote much time to this point because I believe that being a parliamentarian is a calling and not a profession. It is far from rewarding, financially, as we all know, and in the end result it is probably far from rewarding in any other material sense. Those who choose it, however, must be prepared to enter into the spirit of it to the virtual exclusion of other factors. In other words, the form of Parliament must be placed far above the comfort of parliamentarians. Comfort and convenience alone must not be allowed to deter us from what we believe is right for our country and our people.

If one examines the records of the sittings of Parliament since Union in 1910, it becomes obvious that there has been very little change in the pattern of sessions. There have been fluctuations in the number of sitting days, but they have mostly ranged from about 85 to 115 in any particular year. A peak was reached in one unusual session, the Third Session of the Ninth Parliament of the Union, which had 133 sitting days between 18th January, 1946 and 14th February, 1947, but it will be seen that that was a very extended Parliament. If anything, the number of sitting days has dwindled in the last few years. Last year and in 1971 we had 90 sitting days in each year, while in the election year, 1970, both sessions of Parliament covered a total of no more than 76 days. In 1969 Parliament sat for 95 days and in 1968 it was in session for 91 days. Of course, these figures cannot be looked at in a vacuum. For any sort of comparison to be made it is essential to consider the actual business of Parliament that is being transacted year by year and the demands that are made on Parliament as an institution and upon the members themselves. Probably nothing illustrates this more graphically than the annual Budgets that are placed before Parliament. If one goes back in history a little, right back to the year 1911—and I chose that year because by then the newly formed Union had had a chance to settle down—one sees that the Central Budget provided for expenditure on revenue account totally £16,9 million. In the session in which that Budget was passed Parliament was in session for a total of 98 days. We have seen our country grow since then and we have seen our economy grow. By 1920 the Budget had risen to £23 million, that is expenditure on revenue account, and in that year there were 98 sitting days. By 1930 we had seen more growth and where the Budget figure was £30,8 million Parliament sat for 89 days. Ten years later South Africa was at war. There were two sessions of Parliament, a full one from January to May and one that started in August and proceeded into 1941 and so comparisons are very difficult to make. But coming to 1950 the Budget was already providing for expenditure on revenue account totaling £72,2 million and this Budget was passed in a session which lasted 105 days. Since then there has been what one might well call a dramatic transformation of the South African economy even if one makes allowances for inflationary factors and the consequent drop in the value of the rand. The 1970 Budget as presented provided for the expenditure of R1 924 million on revenue account; in fact the corrected figure was higher. In 1970, in both sessions of Parliament, as I said earlier, there were only 76 sitting days. The pattern of Government expenditure has of course become accentuated since then and in last year’s Budget provision was made for the expenditure of R2 845 million on revenue account. Last year, let me remind hon. members, we sat for 90 days. From this one can draw the conclusion that not only has Parliament been called upon to shoulder vastly increased responsibility for spending huge sums of money, but that the actual business of budgeting has naturally become more and more complex, so complex indeed that we must now seriously doubt whether we can fulfil our important role of watchdogs over the exchequer in the same sort of time that was spent when Parliament voted a mere fraction of the money for running a comparatively simple operation of government.

Statistics alone do not tell the whole story. They do, however, provide useful guides to what constitutes much of the real business of Parliament. One of the important functions of Parliament is to keep a constant check on the actions of the executive and the administration which, as we know from experience, is largely the function of the parliamentary Opposition. An indication of how the function has loomed in importance in recent years is given by the fact that last year a record number of 1 306 questions were put to Ministers. The year before a record has also been set up of 1 168 questions. Here I must record that our facilities for questioning Ministers have been improved considerably by the innovation of our being able to table daily written questions to Ministers. This I think is something which has helped not only the Opposition but Parliament as an institution. The figure of 1 306 questions for the 90 sitting days of last year means that an average of 14,5 questions were asked each sitting day. As we know, the session lasted from the end of January to mid-June. Even allowing for the fact that a good number of questions related to the previous recess, it must be asked whether it is right that the vigorous day-by-day questioning of Government actions and decisions should suddenly cease because Parliament has gone into recess, and whether this whole operation should come to nought for six and perhaps six and a half months of the year.

This brings us to the crux of the problem, a problem that is not confined to the political party in power or that in Opposition. After all, roles are reversed, and roles might well be reversed soon. Sir, the question is whether Parliament is justified in handing over the entire control of government to the Executive, the Cabinet, for more than half of every year. Put another way, we can ask ourselves whether the country is getting its full value for its money out of Parliament as it is at present. I believe that the answer is that the country is not getting its full value, even though this does not reflect on individual parliamentarians.

If there is one criticism that has prevailed in the time that I have been, one might say, within the precincts of this House, either in the Press Gallery or in this Chamber, it has been the almost annual criticism that, especially towards the end of a parliamentary session, the Opposition is confronted with a welter of legislation, a circumstance which has very aptly been called “legislation by exhaustion”. We all know the situation. The hon. the Leader of the House is well aware of the objections that have been voiced. I think he has a fair amount of sympathy with them. I believe he always has. This habit of the Government of insisting on pushing through a considerable volume of legislation towards the end of the session—it does not necessarily only apply to the end of the session—gives the Opposition little time to study legislation properly and to debate it in the relaxed and matured atmosphere that should be the preserve of legislators. I need not dwell on this point; the facts are known well enough to every member of this House.

But I should like to go further and suggest that in the crowded schedule of a 90-day session of Parliament, in which we have a main Budget, a Railway Budget and a Post Office Budget, apart from the Part Appropriation and the Additional Appropriation Bills, far too little time is afforded for Government and Opposition members to probe proposed legislation to the depth to which it should be probed. It might well be said that the country has been the loser when legislation has been rushed through Parliament at a speed that has not really given parliamentarians time to handle it adequately.

Then there is also the question of whether, if Parliament had more time at its disposal, spread more evenly through the year, the Government might be prepared to refer far more legislation to Select Committees before the Second Reading stage. If this were done—and we would need the time to do it—I believe that only good would result; for such legislation can be tested fairly exhaustively before it is brought to the floor of this Chamber. Indeed, Sir, I would suggest that we might well then be able to afford time to have a fresh look at the whole question of Select Committees, standing Select Committees in particular. If we were able to spend more time on Select Committees, we might well find ourselves able to study such things as proposed water projects, for example. In the case of some of them, they are brought to this House and are placed on the estimates. An arbitrary figure is given, and then successive White Papers are produced which increase the cost two, three and perhaps even more fold; the Orange River project was an example of this.

There are problems attached to my proposal, but I do not believe that these problems are too many or too great to be overcome. What I have in mind when I ask for at least two distinct sessions of Parliament is for us to have one as a budget session and one largely legislative, although the latter could well give far more time than is afforded at present to private members’ business. As I have indicated earlier, I realize that there are problems. Some of them will be dealt with by subsequent speakers, but before we admit defeat—and I believe we should not have to admit defeat—let us ask ourselves one thing: Whatever problems there are, is the most important thing not to have an efficient, sound and highly effective Parliament in South Africa?

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the hon. member for Kensington on a very interesting and well-considered speech, on which he probably spent a great deal of time. The speech at least evidences a little idealism, and who does not like a bit of idealism? I must tell him I always expected that if someone came forward with a motion about having two or more sessions of Parliament per year in South Africa, it would be someone from somewhere in the back benches, someone who had not already been involved with this Parliament for some years. I did not expect it to come from a member such as the hon. member for Yeoville, for example, or the hon. member for Durban Point or others.

You will still get many surprises in your lifetime. *

I think older members know that Parliament has taken shape over a period of centuries, that it has taken shape in South Africa over many, many decades and that if it could still have been improved, this would at least already have been done after 60 years.

The hon. member for Kensington chiefly made three points. In the first place he complained about the great deal of work, and for that I want to give him credit; a Member of Parliament has a great deal of work. I want to speak, in particular, of the more senior members. But I do not really want to say now that members in the back benches work themselves to death. In fact, I know of many members who even get an opportunity to do a bit of studying here in Parliament, and it keeps them fresh. I could give you many names. This just goes to show me that they still have time to do that. But, Sir, are we now going to become afraid of work? I should hate to know that the hon. members for Kensington and Pinelands, who each have two strong arms, work only two or three hours a day. I should hate that; it would be a tremendous waste of manpower, and good manpower, if they, as the hon. member said, only sit here for four days of the week to do a little work, and then perhaps do something else for the rest of the week. I do not think we must be afraid of work. I think Parliament should rather set an example to the rest of South Africa to show we are prepared to work, because that is what we need in South Africa.

The hon. member also referred to the appropriations, and showed how they were constantly increasing. That is so, without any doubt, but it does not mean that if an appropriation continually increases, criticism necessarily follows suit. If the hon. member for Kensington wanted to have a point there, he should rather have said that the Standing Orders should be changed so that he could have more of an opportunity to criticize the Budget. But I now ask the hon. member for Kensington if there is any member of the Opposition, in the modern functioning of our Parliament here, who wanted to speak further about a subject and could not find the opportunity to do so. The answer is “No”. No one can say that.

I say it.

Mr. Speaker, the rules of this House are that the Opposition can speak about each Bill for as long as they like, and if there is anyone who has any complaints it is the hon. members on this side, because as soon as the U.P. stop speaking, then of course, as a result of our alternative debating, we must also stop speaking. That goes without saying. I do not think the hon. member can advance that as an argument.

The hon. member also spoke of the many questions that are asked. I want to have him consider doing a little research about the number of questions asked throughout the years. He would then find out that the most questions per member per day are asked just after an election, and also just before the term of that Parliament expires. In those two periods the most questions are asked, apparently to make an impression on the electorate and I do not blame hon. members for that. This party also did so when it was in the Opposition. But that is how Parliament functions.

Mr. Speaker, this subject is not being broached for the first time in this House today. In fact, it is a subject that has virtually been done to death. It was raised for the first time in 1918 by the then member for Umbilo, Mr. C. P. Robinson. It was also raised in the same year by the hon. member for Boshof, the late Commandant C. A. van Niekerk. It was raised in the Senate in 1919 by Senator Ware, and it was raised in 1934, for example, by the then member for Roodepoort, Colonel C. F. Stallard. In all instances the Government said it was not prepared to relinquish the present one session per year.

It is actually unfair to compare out Parliament with any other parliament in the world. Because South Africa has a union system, we have less legislation to deal with annually than Britain, for example. In 1959, for example, America had a total of 1 159 644 Acts on its Statute Book. That is a colossal amount. Does the hon. member for Yeoville know that in South Africa we only have about 500 principal Acts—I am now not speaking about the amending Acts passed each year In other words, our legislative programme is not pressing as in other countries. Many of our ordinary legislative functions rest with the provincial councils, etc., with the result that we have a relatively small number of Acts that have to be passed annually.

I want to acknowledge that it would have been an ideal situation if our Parliament could have sat throughout the year. That much I want to concede to the hon. member. But you must not forget that South Africa is different to any other country in the world because it constitution has embodied in it something that is unique. In terms of sections 23 and 27 of the Constitution we have provision for various capitals, the administrative capital, Pretoria, and the legislative capital, Cape Town. If we want to speak about two or more sessions per year we shall first have to do away with that arrangement and I want to give all hon. members, who speak from time to time about the shifting of Parliament, the following for their consideration: As unlikely as it is that the administrative capital in Pretoria will be shifted to Cape Town, so unlikely is it that the legislative capital of Cape Town will be shifted to Pretoria; I want to put it in even stronger terms: Just as unlikely as it is that Meintjieskop will be transferred to Cape Town, so unlikely is it that Table Mountain will be transferred to Pretoria. We can forget about that altogether because it deals with an agreement, at the commencement of Union, which we shall have to honour.

Sir, has the hon. member for Kensington, who is a relatively new member, ever thought of the disruption even one session per year causes as far as members, etc., are concerned, for example? The major disruption is in respect of accommodation in Cape Town for all the Members of Parliament. I see in the old reports and Minutes of the House of Assembly that as far back as 1919 the following question was put by the then member for Boshof, Commandant C. A. van Niekerk; he asked whether the Government was aware (translation)—

This accommodation problem has not only been in existence since yesterday or the day before yesterday, but since 1910, and it will still exist for hundreds of years in the future. At the time he also complained that Cape Town had a shortage of water. Today the city still has a shortage of water, and in that connection he asked (translation)—

I do not know whether he had a spot like Kakamas or Pretoria in mind, but, Sir, what is most important is that he saw the problem of accommodation as a universal problem for every Member of Parliament. Sir, the present Parliament consists of 166 members of the House of Assembly and 54 Senators, a total of 220. Let us assume that each one has a wife and an average of three children. Here I want to add that there are some of the younger members who already have five children. In athletic parlance one can say they have not even warmed up properly yet. Therefore one can say that at least 1 000 people are affected, people who must obtain accommodation here for one session. Then there is the education of their children. Let us forget, for the moment, about the money involved. Their children come to schools here, in Acacia Park and in Cape Town, from 73 different schools. We know that the syallabi do not fit in; we know that when the children return they are miles behind their classmates. The hon. member probably wants a session at the end of the year as well, when those children will have to write exams. That will mean that countless numbers of those children will not pass; it cannot be otherwise.

But he does not have any children.

Sir, take the officials, for example. At present there are 270 officials that come to Parliament annually. I notice that in 1919 the then Prime Minister, replying to a question, said that it cost £7 700 (R15 400) to transport just the officials to Cape Town. It is impossible to determine what it costs today, but the figure of R1 million is mentioned. That is a tremendous amount. The hon. member now wants that disruption to take place twice instead of once a year. I am not even mentioning the diplomats. We already penalize them because they must maintain two ambassadorial dwellings, one in Pretoria and one in Cape Town, but their ordinary staff do not have special houses; they must creep into flats here and rent houses during the session and now the hon. member expects them to do this twice a year.

Mr. Speaker, what about the Press? There are many of us who are very prejudiced as far as the Press is concerned. But the Press is part of the parliamentary institution. If we do not have the Press here, we could speak until we were blue in the face, but our electorate would not know what we were saying. I think we could demonstrate more tolerance towards the Press. In the old days, when the British Parliament was formed, an ordinary member had to pay one penny for every ten lines he wrote down in Parliament. In 1771 Baldwin even had to appear before the Parliamentary Bar because he had published a few of the debates and thereby committed a breach of parliamentary privilege. Only since 1835 has the Press obtained permission to publish debates, and today we are grateful for the fact. One could say that Parliament today without the Press would be like Klaas Geswind en zijn Paard without the ghost. It is part and parcel of Parliament. Why then should we not consider them, because they also have those problems? Then we would, for two sessions in the year, i.e. twice a year, have that whole “rigmarole” of members, officials, diplomats and the Press hunting for flats and accommodation. Is it not bad enough already?

But let us take our Budget. The country’s Budget is adapted to the parliamentary sessions. Our financial year ends on 31st March. Therefore the Budget Speech must be delivered at more or less a certain time of the year. I do concede that the Main Budget has already, on occasion, been delivered as early as 19th February, in 1919 for example, on 25th February in 1942, on 28th February in 1946 and in 1948, and it has already been delivered as late as 5th May, in 1922 for example, and on 30th June in 1924, after four months of that financial year had already passed. But a country’s finances are not organized in that way. One cannot simply rope Parliament in to approve the Estimates afterwards. That does not work. How are those Estimates to be prepared? The present practice is that officials hand in their statements and Estimates in October, but the hon. member now wants a parliamentary session in October. He should not think this is an easy thing to do. Today’s Budget is not just a simple piece of arithmetic, it is a complicated system of economic cycles prepared with due consideration for foreign trends and other complicated formulae. It is therefore not such an easy matter. Sir, how can this be done if Parliament is sitting at the time?

But now I want to ask the hon. member for Kensington this. Is it now at all necessary, apart from all the objections, to have two sessions of Parliament per year? What is the trend? I will readily concede that instead of the customary 100-day session we should perhaps sit for 120 days if it is necessary. Very well, let us then sit, but the trend in South Africa is rather for Parliament to sit fewer and fewer days and do more and more work. Sir, today Parliament functions a good five times better and more effectively than was the case 25 years ago. Just let me give you a few figures. In 1912 there were 104 sitting days and they only passed 30 Acts. In 1922 there were 107 sitting days and only 42 Acts were passed. In 1942 there were 70 sitting days with 47 Acts. In 1962 there were 104 sitting days with 93 Acts and last year there were 90 sitting days with 103 Acts. What does this indicate? It indicates that over the years this Parliament has been made to run more smoothly. It functions much more effectively. Its procedure has been improved. It is more streamlined. And let us pay tribute to those who deserve it. There are many bodies to whom tribute must be paid for this, but I just want to mention one name and that is the name of the present hon. Leader of the House, Mr. Ben Schoeman. His name will be deeply carved in the history of this Parliament for his contribution to the smooth running of this Parliament and its proceedings. I want to mention a few examples to show how smoothly things work today. In 1914 there was the Indemnity Act with only four clauses. General Smuts holds the record in this Parliament for the longest speech, i.e. a speech of six and a quarter hours. His speech in Hansard, when he introduced the Second Reading, runs to 55 columns, and that was in a summarized form, as Hansard was published at the time.

The Second Reading of what?

Of the Indemnity Act. But this Act, which contained four clauses, took 134 hours to get through this Parliament. That is equal to 34 sitting days, for one Act. And what is even more interesting, is that the six Opposition members took up 102 of the 134 hours. Sir, there were 40 divisions, at 23 of which less than 10 people were sitting on the one side. Now I am not even speaking of night sittings and of the guillotine that was employed in later years. I remember that when I came here we still regularly sat in the evenings. We had lovely night sittings. I should have liked to have seen the hon. member for Kensington, who now complains about so much work, after one such night sitting. It must not be thought that democracy and Parliament functioned better in those days. Just look at what happened in the Senate with the Budget, for example. In 1934 all the stages of the Appropriation Bill—the enormous South African Budget, were dealt with in only one hour and 20 minutes. It went through the Senate like greased lightning. In 1935 it took only 40 minutes in the Senate. In 1936 it took only half an hour, only 30 minutes to pilot through the Senate the entire South African Budget in all its various stages. It was at the time, and also in my day, the custom that when Parliament adjourned that day, Ministers and members went and sat in the Senate to see that they passed the legislation immediately so that we could go home. When Senator Nichols—I quote from Senate Hansard, 1941, col. 400—said the following he clearly had the third chapter Virgil in mind—

That is how it went at the time.

Do not think that things went more smoothly at the time than they do today. Do you know that at the time there was an arrangement in Parliament that during the discussion of the Budget one could only criticize the Government for its actions during that financial year. Today the field is open and hon. members can criticize the Government for all its actions in the distant past and even blame it for those in the future as well. The hon. member for Maitland will acknowledge that I am right in saying that today we have a much better arrangement because there is more time at the disposal of the Opposition in which to criticize the Government.

Let us now put it in these terms: Does parliamentary democracy require more or longer sessions in South Africa? I say it is nonsense, complete nonsense. Democracy naturally requires that every national representative should at any time be able to express himself as far as the governing party is concerned, and now I want to ask what hon. member opposite cannot also say what he has to say here during the parliamentary session on public platforms in Pretoria and Johannesburg when Parliament is in recess? They can criticize the Government. They can get on to any platform, in Naboomspruit if it comes to that, and set the world on fire if they have the necessary ability. What hon. member of the Opposition can complain that he is at present being muzzled?

Democracy requires one important thing we must never lose sight of, i.e. absolute separation between the three State organs: the executive, the legislative and the judicial powers. Parliament’s basic function is to pass laws; not to rule the country in that sense, but to pass laws. There are three phenomena in the development of Parliament that have led to the fact that members today are under the impression that Parliament also has executive powers. I know that if the hon. member for Bezuidenhout follows me up he will try to put it in that way, that democracy is being encroached upon. I want to ask him this question in advance: If it is so that democracy can only be fully implemented if we have two sessions or if we were to sit throughout the year, then surely there has never been a democracy in South Africa, because since 1910 we have always had only one session per year, other than in exceptional instances and at election times. I say there are three phenomena in the development of Parliament that have led to the fact that hon. members are under the impression that Parliament also has executive powers. One is that the executive authority is composed from the party with the majority in Parliament. But it has never been the case. Never confuse the original and fundamental aim of Parliament with that of the executive authority. There must be clear dividing lines in democracy. We know that the political party, as it manifests itself in our modern Parliament, only came into being in Britain for the first time. If one goes back into that country’s history, to the year 1679 when the “Exclusion Bill” was passed, one would see that politics had begun to play a role in Parliament since that time. The motion of no confidence is an institution that has only been in use since 1841.

There is also a second phenomenon, i.e. the fact that a Member of Parliament can criticize the executive authority about the way in which it has spent the Appropriation. That is what the hon. member for Kensington referred to. Do hon. members know that this is a special privilege; it is a privilege to be able to criticize the executive authority. It still does not mean that Parliament has the executive authority in its hands. National representation in Parliament had its origins at the time of Simon de Montfort, when he demanded that before the king taxed the people, the people should give permission for that tax to be demanded from them. This is a rule that is still summarized, for example, in section 62 of our Constitution. It is also summed up in section 60, which provides that an Act which makes revenue or money available, or which must impose tax, can only be introduced in the House of Assembly. Section 62 provides that a valid measure can only be introduced by a Minister. All these are remnants of that usage and the original object of Parliament as exclusively a legislative body. We know that the first parliament that refused to grant that money was the “Insane Parliament” of 1258. That Parliament was not as insane as that, but someone changed its Latin Minutes, and words that were probably “insigne” or “infame” in Latin were changed to “insane”. That is where that Parliament got the name of the “Insane Parliament”. There is a suspicion that the king himself did it. Nonetheless, it just shows hon. members that the rule that this Parliament may criticize the budget is an institution that has distant origins and that springs from the parliamentary source as it has developed through the centuries.

Thirdly there is the phenomenon that the members of the executive power are today also Members of Parliament. Of course, this never used to be the case either. The king’s advisers always held discussions with those who had influence and who were loyal to the king. Only in 1662 were Bennett and Coventry for the first time appointed to the Cabinet from the Lower House. That was the first time that there was a Minister in Parliament, and that happened after Parliament had already had its long history and been given its substance. Only in 1668 did it become clear that there should be harmony between the Crown, the Ministers and the majority in Parliament. Only with the drawing up of the Standing Orders of 1833 in the British Parliament did government functions begin to gain precedence in Parliament. Of course, Ministers always have to take into account the fact of having the majority in this House of Assembly behind them. They must, of course, take into account the fact of always having the majority of the electorate behind them, but this still does not make of this body an executive state organ; not at all. It is of course a fact that when the executive power feels that it is necessary to convene Parliament, it also does so. It is its duty to do so. It was done, for example, in 1914 to discuss the question of war, and in 1919 to confirm the Treaty of Versailles. In 1939 it was done again in connection with the Second World War. If the Government refuses to convene Parliament in a period of crisis, I would be the first person to object to that, but this will only be when special sittings are required, and I believe this Government would always do so. In other words, there is no need whatsoever for the South African Parliament to sit throughout the year. This does not detract in any way from our parliamentary democracy. It has no effect on it whatsoever; in fact, if Parliament were to sit twice a year instead of its present single sitting, it would be difficult for members of this hon. House of Assembly to carry out their duties properly as far as their voters are concerned. My constituency covers more than 40 000 square miles. If my constituency were an ostrich and the hon. member for Kensington’s constituency were a small stone, my ostrich would have followed his small stone without one’s even seeing that it had anything in its throat; that is as far as surface area is concerned, of course. I have to travel 2 500 miles just to traverse my constituency. When must I have time to attend congresses and to carry out other functions which are all a part of the duty of a member of the House of Assembly? The position of a member of the House of Assembly would be impossible if he had to carry out those functions throughout the year. We do not all have urban constituencies.

That is why I say that this Parliament, as we have it today, took on its present shape for very good reasons. I want to appeal to the Government to keep to this arrangement. It is a very good arrangement and one that meets with the dignity and the worthiness of the present-day Parliament in South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, in the course of my speech I shall deal with certain statements made by the hon. member for Middelland. As the hon. member for Kensington emphasized, this is a private members motion. Consequently it goes without saying that the standpoints we are adopting, are our own opinions. I am very pleased that the hon. member for Kensington brought this motion before the House of Assembly today. We are all to blame for the position being what it is, but I think we create far too few opportunities for ourselves as members of this Parliament, to discuss and exchange ideas on our Parliament and on the efficiency of our parliamentary system and our parliamentary working methods. In my opinion we are still to a large extent where we began in 1910. Twelve years ago we became a Republic, and after 12 years of being a Republic next to nothing has been done to give our Parliament a republican character, and to bring its working methods into line with the working methods of the great republics of the world. The motion, as it has been worded, deals with only one aspect of our parliamentary working method, namely how and when we should hold our sessions. But the reasons why I am supporting this motion, and why I should myself like to see a change in our existing system of having only one long, highly concentrated session during the first half of the year, obviously affect the system as a whole. I want to ask hon. members to note that the motion does not specifically ask for two sessions in a year; the motion asks that there should be not fewer than two sessions in the year. Actually I am in favour of this motion because I am in favour of a continuous session with regular shorter or longer recesses during the year as these may be required. In other words, I think that Parliament should convene regularly and that it should spread its sessions, according to the work available, evenly over the entire year.

I want to admit at once that, at first glance, most members will perhaps think that this will be inconvenient for them. I can understand that some of the members will probably say that the present system with its one session personally suits us better. There are members who will say that they are in a hurry to get back to their farms or their practices and that consequently they prefer one session as a matter of personal convenience. I am prepared to concede that, as far as I, too, am concerned, it is personally more convenient for me to have the one session and then to pack up and leave; but I think that this is after all a matter which should not be looked at from a personal point of view We should rather look at this matter from the point of view of what is in the best interests of South Africa. Members of Parliament come and go; the average parliamentary lifespan of a member of Parliament is only, as my information has it, seven years. In any case, I do not think that a person should make himself available for parliamentary service if he cannot give top priority to that parliamentary service. I want to add that the remuneration should of course make it possible for a person to give top priority to his parliamentary service, but this is a matter in regard to which it is always possible to make adjustments. The point is that the question of the working methods of Parliament should not be looked at from the point of view of the members’ personal interests but, I believe, from the point of view of what is best for South Africa in the circumstances of the modern times in which we are living and also in view of the kind of country in which we are living. In an earlier debate of this session I mentioned that we assembled on 2nd February this year, after Parliament had been on vacation for almost eight months. The previous year, 1972, we had a recess lasting months. That means that for almost two-thirds of the year, every year, there is no parliamentary supervision over the Government of the day, whichever Government is governing. We are not concerned here with the present Government as such. The situation is that there is no parliamentary supervision over the work of the Government of the day for at least two-thirds of every year. This in itself entails a great many disadvantages which should be obvious to us all. This gives rise to an excess of bureaucracy; bureaucracy in the unfavourable sense of the word. This leads to an excess of autocracy or overconfidence or self-righteousness, on the part of the Government of the day. Again I say that I am not alluding to any specific Government. We are discussing the system here. The principal objection which I actually have to the present dispensation is that for two-thirds of the year the Government of the day is completely at liberty, free of all parliamentary control, assistance or supervision. I know of no Western democratic parliament with a strong central government where anything like this happens. There are in fact cases of federal authorities where there are strong local state-governments and where the field of the government of the federal Parliament is consequently more limited. Here in our country we have a strong central form of government, however, with weak local government. I must say that I know of no single example in the Western democratic world where one has a situation in which the Government is for two-thirds of the year free of all parliamentary supervision. I really do not think that it is in the interests of any country that one should have such a situation if one is really in earnest about a parliamentary government. We as members know from experience that there are other major disadvantages associated with the position as it is. The present highly-concentrated sessions which we have, leads to overhasty legislation. Usually legislation in our country—there are exceptions, but I am referring now to the normal position—is prepared in secret by the Minister and his officials. It is introduced here in Parliament as a surprise to us, and then it is piloted through Parliament as quickly as possible by the Government of the day. It has happened, and it is still happening, that legislation ends up here on the Table of the House, and only a few days elapse before the Bill has to be dealt with in this House. If one takes into consideration that we have an average of approximately 100 sitting days per annum and that we pass an average of approximately 100 laws per annum here, it means that on an average we dispose of one Bill per day. The hon. member for Kensington mentioned that there were 90 sitting days last year and 108 laws—therefore more than one Act per day was piloted through Parliament in 1972. No one can tell me that such a process could be to the advantage of any country in the world. The entire situation as it now exists is attributable to nothing but the system which we have. The present process is one of pressure cooker legislation—that is what I call it. It is not necessarily deliberately so as a result of the actions of any Government, but simply because this is the existing system.

Now, I am very pleased that the hon. member for Kensington has given the country a picture of the enormous scope of the daily work of members of Parliament. We all know that the general public think that the only work associated with Parliament is to make a few speeches, and some people think we drink far more coffee than we really do. That is why Germany, when it created its new Parliament and its new democracy, appointed parliamentary liaison officers who regularly keep the public informed in various ways of the activities of their Parliament. They have a parliamentary weekly. They send out pamphlets to the people on the activities of Parliament. I read in one of the pamphlets that the German member of Parliament receives 4 000 blue books and documents on his table during the course of one session. Sir, I have not counted the number of documents, blue books, etc., we receive in our Parliament, but it is an enormous number. For that reason I really cannot imagine how a person like the hon. member for Middelland can think that if there are fewer public sitting days, less work is inevitably done. We know what the extent is of the preparatory work and study which ought to be done. There is the duty of maintaining contact with the public and public organizations. There is the wealth of correspondence, representations to the Government, open meetings, group meetings, caucus meetings and general political activities. The ordinary member, if he wants to do his work and wants to remain in contact with the public has a tremendous task before him which cannot, under the present circumstances, be properly carried out by anyone. There is no one sitting in this House who can state in all honesty that he is able to go through half of the pile of documents which end up on his table. Apart from all these activities we maintain a sitting programme of five working days plus one evening in the week. It has been my privilege to visit a number of parliaments—I did not count how many—in various parts of the world. I am referring to major parliaments now. I must say that nowhere did I come across anything of the nature of what we have here in South Africa. In Belgium, for example, they only sit for four days in the week—not in order to work less, but in order to afford members of Parliament an opportunity of working more efficiently and doing more studying so that they may be better prepared for the task of a Member of Parliament. In Germany their Parliament sits for three weeks, and then they have one week off, after which they again sit for three weeks.

Again it is not a case of their wanting to do less work. We are not looking for less work. This motion is in fact aimed at getting more efficient work out of the members. They do this in Germany because they know that there are other, wider obligations than merely making a speech or participating in the activities in the Debating Chamber of Parliament. Sir, you must bear in mind that in most of these countries the sessions extend over the entire year, and in addition you will find that in most Western countries—I can mention Canada and Australia as examples—every Member of Parliament has a full-time secretary. He has full-time clerical assistance and then he still has this advantage that the activities of Parliament are better divided and spread over the year and that he has more time for study and for office work. In a country such as the United States of America, as many of us know, they have a library system—I am referring to the Library of Congress—in which there is a large staff of experts to assist members with research and the collation of facts. One can walk into the American Library of Congress and ask them to prepare a memorandum for you within a matter of a few days. All the facts you want you are able to obtain through the parliamentary library; and yet, in spite of these advantages, they find it necessary that their session should not be the high pressure type of session which we have here in our country. Sir, I have visited various parliaments all over the world, and I must honestly say that of all those I have seen, our Parliament works under the greatest pressure with, in comparison, the fewest facilities of any I have ever come across. For the sake of efficiency, for the sake of good legislation, it is not in the interests of the country that we continue on the present basis. Sir, this could have worked in 1910 and in subsequent years, but we must bear in mind that in those days we were for the most part an agricultural country. But today we are a highly industrialized country. Ours is a big country, geographically speaking. We are as multi-national, as diversified, as any country could possibly be; we are governing a territory like South-West Africa; we have innumerable international problems and many more that I could mention. The system of parliamentary government which we follow, is far closer to the requirements of 1910 than to the requirements of 1973. But a further major weakness of our present set-up is that members of the House of Assembly—I am referring to those of us who are sitting here—are not rendering and are unable to render the productive service for which they were elected in the eyes of the public and which they are able to render to the Government and to the administration of the country.

Mr. Speaker, in most European parliaments one will find, apart from the fact that most of them sit on a throughout-the-year basis with periodic recesses, that the members are assigned on a pro rata party basis to standing committees of Parliament, and these permanent committees are in session throughout the year. The services of the members are utilized throughout as representatives of the people. These committees are regularly engaged in investigating draft legislation and in calling for and hearing expert evidence in regard to it. Sir, in this way the member of Parliament is throughout a means of communication between the needs of the people and the task of Parliament. One finds in European parliaments that members are utilized to serve on commissions. Just think how many extra parliamentary commissions there are, while members here are not utilized for that purpose. In European countries it is also the practice that members of Parliament serve as external links for promoting the country’s trade and foreign relations. In other words, the members are in the fullest sense of the word agents of the people whose services as members of parliament are utilized productively throughout for the entire term for which they were elected.

Sir, these standing and permanent committees also function when Parliament is not in session. For example, there are no fewer than 23 such permanent committees in Germany. I am mentioning only a few: Committee on Foreign Affairs, Committee on Defence, Committee on Questions of the Economy and the Middle Class, Committee on Social Policy, Committee on Science, Cultural Policy and Publicity, Committee on Election Questions, and in this way they are continually making use of the members of parliament in the service of the state. In Belgium for example they have the same system of permanent committees, and one of these for example, is called the Commission on European Affairs. They elect a parliamentary Commission on European Affairs, as we ought to have one on African Affairs, and the task of this Commission is as follows (translation)—

There are numerous such examples. I am mentioning this simply to demonstrate how in other countries the services of the Member of Parliament are always at the disposal of the administration of the country. I want to emphasize that the members in other countries are being fully utilized in the service of the country. What I find important, is that in the Parliaments of most republican countries, as well as others, all legislation is first referred to a standing commission of Parliament before it comes before the open Parliament. The result is that by the time a Bill is placed before a member on his desk it is not as we have it here, where the Bill is prepared in secret and ends up as a surprise on your desk, then that Bill has gone through a process which began with a parliamentary commission of the two parties. That commission then requests the Government for an explanatory memorandum on what it is seeking to achieve with the specific Bill, and then it calls for evidence from people who will be affected by the legislation. By the time the Bill ends up in front of the ordinary member he has before him in addition to the Bill, an explanatory memorandum from the Government, and the public evidence concerning how the Bill will affect the people concerned. This is what I mean when I say that I believe that we should give our Parliament a more republican character, one which is closer to the major republican parliaments in the world. We shall have to modernize our parliamentary system if we wish to serve South Africa properly. For that reason I want to make an appeal to the Leader of the House. I am not asking him to agree immediately with the points we have raised here, but I do want to ask him not to condemn them out of hand. Is it entirely impossible for us to appoint a parliamentary committee to look into this system and to give a little consideration to our suggestions? There is no reason why we cannot appoint a parliamentary commission to see, in this twelfth year of the Republic, whether we cannot as Parliament modernize our working methods and utilize the services of members of Parliament more productively and improve our process of legislation. I am asking the hon. the Leader of the House to give positive consideration to appointing such a commission.

I know—and with this I want to conclude—that one of the principal counterarguments which is being advanced as to why it is difficult in practice to have a continuous session—and the hon. member for Middelland mentioned this—is the fact that we have two capitals. I know that secretly all governments—and this also emerged from the passages which the hon. member for Middelland quoted—would like to remain as free as possible from parliamentary control. That is quite natural. But I think governments should also take note that they are not permanent institutions and that they should also regard the matter in the light of the interests of the country rather than in the light of the convenience of the cabinet. But even with the retention of the position of two capitals, things are no longer all that difficult today. We have the use of telex; we have the convenience of rapid transportation, and I do not think it is so terribly impossible for one to be able to have a session during which the Budget is passed, and then further sessions during the course of the year during which previously published legislation is dealt with and only the necessary and relevant number of officials are brought down here for shorter or longer periods. As I have said, the use of telephones, telex and other means of communication make it far easier to have such a system today. I want to go even further. I believe that it is so important that we should introduce a more efficient system of legislation, that we should utilize the services of Members of Parliament to better effect, that we should have permanent committees as in Europe and, above all, that we should have more regular supervision by Parliament over the activities of the Government of the day, that I want to say that if we could only achieve this by changing the arrangement in regard to the capital, I think we ought to do so. I cannot see how the hon. member for Middelland can talk of an “agreement”, for many agreements made in 1910 no longer exist today. I think it is time we put 1910 behind us. Perhaps the time has come to hold a referendum as it was held at the time of our becoming a Republic and ask the voting public whether they still want the arrangement of three capitals instead of one. I do not want to go into what my preference would be if I had to vote for what city should be the capital, but I am convinced that if the one becomes the capital of the Republic, the other will eventually become the federal capital of the new federal republic of South Africa, whatever form this may take. But apart from this. I think the time is past when this kind of thing should stand in our way to ensuring more efficient parliamentary government than we have at the moment. All that we ought to do is to think ahead a little harder than some seem prepared to do at the moment.

Mr. Speaker, I first want to reply to a few of the points raised by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout. He digressed a very long way from the motion. The motion specifically asks that there should not be fewer than two sessions a year. However, the motion has nothing to do with standing committees and so forth. That is a different subject altogether. The hon. member said in advance that I was going to condemn the motion. I am not going to condemn the motion; I am just not going to accept it. I am convinced that there is a very small minority of hon. members on that side who would be prepared to accept the motion.

Let us vote.

The hon. member for Kensington allowed for that possibility in advance. He said his party had nothing to do with it; it was only his personal motion.

What about your side?

Now it is the personal motion of that hon. member as well as the hon. member for Bezuidenhout. The hon. member for Bezuidenhout says that we have done little to bring our proceedings in line with those of the great republics of the world. Which republics? Is there any basis for comparison between the constitutional system of South Africa and that of the United States of America? The United States of America is a federal state with a federal constitution. It is true that it has a Congress that is in session throughout the year, but I think our methods in South Africa are much more efficient even than those of the American Congress. With what other republics of the world are we now to compare ourselves? With the French republic or the German republic?

With all the European republics.

But you cannot compare those countries with South Africa. South Africa is a small country with long distances. South Africa has two capitals; the one is the legislative and the other the administrative capital. No comparison with other countries is possible. The hon. member asks what is best for South Africa. I waited to hear all the reasons he advanced for changing the present system, for having at least two sessions a year. What are the reasons he advanced? He says that for almost two-thirds of the year there is no parliamentary supervision of the activities of the Government. What parliamentary supervision is there of the activities of the Government? Even if there were two sessions a year, lasting from 4½ to five months, there would still be no supervision of the Government for two-thirds of the year. That is not going to be the solution to the matter; not at all, unless we sit almost throughout the year for about three or four days a week, as the hon. member for Kensington said. The hon. member spoke of Bills being tabled and of hon. members hardly having time to study them in depth because they are kept so busy. However, many of these Bills are unopposed and are supported by the Opposition. That is the reason why such a large number are placed on the Statute Book every year. When there is a controversial or important Bill, however, the Opposition usually have every opportunity and all the time they need to study that Bill in order to acquaint themselves with its contents. When there are discussions between the Whips of that side and myself I always give them every opportunity and all the time they need to do so. As far as that is concerned, there is no complaint. Just think how many Bills there are that go through Parliament unopposed. Let us just take the recent period. How many of the Bills that have already been accepted have been supported by the Opposition? So they do not need more time to study them. The hon. member speaks of all the activities that members have and says that they cannot do their work properly. The reason for that is that they are such a small Opposition. That is not our fault.

That is so petty!

No, it is not petty; it is the truth. It is a small Opposition and that results in all the members having to do much more work than they would have done if they had been a larger Opposition. That is the reason for it.

I do not agree at all.

They talk about working, but I do not know whether there is one hon. member who does more work than I do. I probably have the largest department of all Ministers, and in addition I am Leader of the House. In spite of that I am in the House more often than the hon. member for Bezuidenhout.

But you have many secretaries and people who help you.

I do the work; not the secretaries. [Interjections.] That hon. member talks about the efficiency of Parliament, but we already have the most efficient Parliament. It has really been streamlined, as they say. That was done as a result of all the experience we gained over the years. We gained experience of how to make the machine operate smoothly. We did so by means of consultations and by means of committees consisting of members of both sides of the House. After they had made the recommendations we amended the Standing Rules and Orders. That was done to make the whole system function more smoothly and to make it more efficient. I do not believe that any inquiry is going to make Parliament function more efficiently than it is functioning at the moment. The hon. member said that there should be standing committees. The commission that recently reported on Nusas and others recommended that there be a standing security committee. I hope that this will be welcomed by the hon. member and that they will serve on that standing committee with the greatest enthusiasm, because this is one opportunity for him to practise what he preached this afternoon.

We should like you to accept the system of standing committees.

That standing committee will be instituted, and, as the hon. members recommended in that report, they will have the opportunity to become members of that standing committee.

Now I want to tell the hon. member something about the British House of Commons: It is true that the hon. member has visited that Parliament, but he has not made a study of that parliamentary system.

What do you know about it? I mean, what do you know about what I have done?

The hon. member told us himself that he had visited them.

No, I have visited about 20 parliaments with a view to study.

Has the hon. member studied them?

Yes.

All their systems and how they work? But then the hon. member should know how the standing committees of the British House of Commons work. What they do there is to refer Bills, and certainly not all of them, to those standing committees consisting of members of both sides of the House. After they have dealt with it there is no committee stage again when the Bill comes before the House. This is done to avoid the committee stage. That makes parliament function much more rapidly than would have been the case if they had dealt with each Bill in committee as we do.

We lack the necessary public evidence.

Yes, we too can appoint select committees to deal with certain Bills, with the right to call for public evidence. We can in fact do this; there is nothing to prevent it. But the other reason is that we have such a small number of members that you cannot have a large number of members serving on various committees while Parliament is in session. Then Parliament itself and this House could not function. No members would be prepared to serve on those committees while Parliament was in session. These were the only reasons advanced by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout as to why there should be two sessions of the House.

†I listened with great interest to the hon. member for Kensington, but I am afraid that he did not convince me as to why there should be two sessions of Parliament per year. As a matter of fact, what he pleaded for and the whole tenor of his speech was that Parliament should sit throughout the year. He suggested that Parliament should sit three or four days per week. Well, I do not know what the members will do over the long weekends from Thursday to Monday. I do not think they will have sufficient parliamentary work to keep them busy and occupied during those days.

What about Australia?

Australia is a different matter altogether. It is a federal country. The Provincial Councils of the Transvaal and Natal sit three or four days a week and they sit about six weeks a year. Surely the hon. members want more work and not less work. That is the whole tenor of the argument. They want more work and not less work. By sitting three or four days per week, they are going to have less work instead of more.

They can then work more efficiently.

How can they function more efficiently sitting three or four days per week?

There would be more time for study and preparation.

What are you going to study? How many members do study? There is one very significant thing the hon. member for Kensington said, namely that the public can very well ask whether the country is getting its full value from Parliament. I wonder whether they would ask that question if Parliament sits three or four days per week. What will the public’s reaction to that be? We know what their reaction is at the present time, because there are many members who do not do a full day’s work whilst they are members of Parliament. Some of them certainly do but some do not.

Let me deal with the hon. member for Kensington’s suggestion that there should be two sessions in a year. First of all, we shall have to split the present session of about four and a half months into two. It means that at the beginning of the year, you will probably have a two-month session to enable you to put the Railway Budget, the Post Office Budget and the Part Appropriation Bill through the House.

That is not what I said.

Well, the hon. member asked for two sessions. The second session of the year will probably be in September, October and November.

You were not listening.

The second session will be necessary for the main Budget to be passed by the House. In other words, you will have to introduce the Budget about five or six months after the commencement of the financial year, which certainly does not make for efficiency.

You did not listen to my argument at all.

No, the trouble is that the hon. member did not plead for his own motion except at the very end when he spoke about the two sessions.

No, I said I wanted two sessions right from the very start. What is more …

I cannot understand. The hon. member does not know what he said. First of all, he was pleading that Parliament should sit throughout the year. His motion reads that there should be at least two sessions of Parliament per year. Now what does he want—throughout the year or only two sessions?

At least two sessions …

In other words, I must accept that the hon. member wants two sessions or he wants Parliament to sit throughout the year. Parliament must have work if it is to sit for longer than four and a half months.

The motion says “not fewer than two sessions”.

How many sessions do you want then? Three or four? In other words, what the hon. member really wants is for Parliament to sit throughout the year. Is that correctly stated?

Yes, I want the parliamentary sessions to be spread throughout the year. I want an increased number of sitting days.

The hon. member wants to increase the number of sitting days and he wants Parliament to sit throughout the year. Is that clear now?

Yes.

If I accede to the request to increase the number of sitting days, what is Parliament going to do for the rest of the time? Both sides of the House have already come to an arrangement in regard to the number of hours to be allocated for the discussion of financial measures, and by arrangement …

It is inadequate.

If it is inadequate, the hon. member must blame his own members for that.

Why?

Because this was the agreement.

No, we have not agreed to fit the work into the number of days we sit now.

The agreement between the two parties was that 173 hours should be allocated for the Estimates.

Do you believe that that is enough?

I think that it is too much, as a matter of fact. Usually 44 hours are taken by Ministers in reply—that is in respect of the main Estimates.

That is too much.

Thirty-three hours are allocated to the Part Appropriation Bills. That means a total of 250 hours for the financial measures. That was arrived at by agreement between the two sides of the House after long discussions.

When?

Three years ago.

Three years ago?

Does the hon. member think that circumstances have changed to such an extent that we should extend the time now? After listening to all the nonsense from the Opposition, I think we should reduce the number of hours. As I say, the hon. member wants the House to sit throughout the year. In other words, you must make work; you have to adopt Parkinson’s law, i.e. first of all increase the sittings and then look for work to try to keep Parliament busy.

[Inaudible.]

Well, what else? The hon. member must be logical. What does he want except that? He said he wants to increase the number of sitting days. In the last session there were no bills left over. All the Bills that had been introduced, were passed by this House.

I will reply to you.

There will not be an opportunity to reply. You had better reply now across the floor of the House. In other words, what the hon. member now wants if he is logical is to increase the number of sitting days. The hon. member has the opportunity of putting as many questions as he likes on the Order Paper; there is no limit to the number at all. The rules of the House do not, of course, allow stupid or unnecessary questions. On the whole, hon. members can put as many questions as they like. The Bills that are introduced during a session should be passed during the same session. By agreement we have allotted the times for the discussion of financial measures. It takes about four and a half months to complete all the work. Now why in heaven’s name must we extend the duration of the session? To do what? To sit and look at each other, or to allow private members’ motions?

Spend more time on matters of importance.

What does the member regard as important?

Important legislation.

The hon. member has been on the Press Gallery for some time, but he has only been in this House for a very short time. I have been here 30 years and know how Parliament has functioned over the years; I know what is expected of Parliament, and I know how Parliament can be the most efficient. I know that the job of Parliament is to pass legislation and to pass financial measures. We give hon. members the opportunity of introducing private members’ motions, like the one the hon. member has before the House today, for a certain number of days during the session. Apart from that, hon. members have the opportunity in terms of the rules of the House of moving a motion, if allowed by the Speaker, to discuss a matter of importance. Hon. members have this opportunity but very seldom make use of it. In addition to that, hon. members have the half-hour rule, that is at the end of any sitting day to discuss any matter of importance. Again, they do not make use of that. What are we going to do if Parliament sits for another two or three months?

You yourself know how often legislation is rushed through Parliament. What about last year?

During the past few years no legislation has been forced through Parliament. During the past number of years the guillotine has not been applied, the closure has not been applied and we have had no night sittings. There has been such co-operation between the two sides of the House that that was quite unnecessary. Since I have been Leader of the House we have not had a night sitting, because Parliament is functioning excellently and very well; it is thus not necessary. When there is co-operation between the two sides of the House, we get through our work, but we are here to work and not to sit here and look at each other and talk nonsense. If hon. members want the times Parliament sits to be extended, it will merely be with the object of talking nonsense. It will be wasting the taxpayers’ money, because it costs a lot of money to keep Parliament in session. Let me think of a few difficulties if this should happen. The hon. member wants Parliament to sit throughout the year, with suitable recesses of a couple of weeks each in between. Now just imagine the disruption that would cause. Most hon. members, when they come down here, cannot afford to let their houses stand empty and consequently they have to let them. They would not be able to let them for the duration of a session because there would be recesses about every two months or so and they would have to go home for three or four weeks and then come back again. In addition, they would have to find accommodation every time they come down here. During the planting season in October farmers would have to be in Cape Town attending the session. Members who are in business—and there are many members who are still in business—would find their businesses being disrupted, because they would have to be sitting here most of the year.

It is like that now.

Yes, but now their businesses are only disrupted for four and a half months, but what if there are sittings throughout the year? Those members who still practise their professions could not do so if they were here most of the year and only had recesses of two or three weeks at a time. My friend over here has already spoken about the disruption in the schooling of members’ children. Our party congresses usually take place in September and October, and one cannot have party congresses when Parliament sits. The main thing is that we have a parliamentary capital—a legislative capital—and an administrative capital. During one-half of the year the Government has to go to Pretoria. I know we can change that, but it will never be changed. The hon. member for Bezuidenhout can rest assured that it will not be changed in our lifetime. They will never move the legislative capital to Pretoria and we have to accept that as being the position for the foreseeable future. Then there are the long distances members have to travel. It is not like Great Britain, a small country where constituencies are close together and members have to travel only short distances to be able to attend the House of Commons. Even in European countries this is also the case. But our members have to travel long distances …

Only two hours from Johannesburg.

By aircraft, yes, but everybody cannot do that. In that case it will be of assistance to the South African Airways if members travel about 20 to 30 times and pay their own fares.

What do they do in Australia?

But we are not Australia; we are South Africa. In Australia they have a federal parliament and they have their state parliaments.

We will have that, too! [Interjections.]

Well, well. Mr. Speaker, the rules of the House will not allow me to discuss that interjection, and I think the hon. member is pleased that I shall not discuss it. At any rate, our conditions are quite different from those in Australia and in any other country. As I say, it would bring about a complete disruption of the personal activities of members. It would be to the inconvenience of members. It would bring about hardship. It would not add to the efficiency of Parliament. We would not pass more legislation. As a matter of fact, I think we have too many laws on the Statute Book as it is.

Hear, hear!

Sir, just listen to the chorus of hear-hears—and then they want Parliament to sit longer so that they can have more legislation! [Interjections.] I do not know how to understand these members.

If we had more reasonable hours, you would not have had to amend the Group Areas Act so often, which was bad legislation.

Reasonable hours? I think hon. members have very reasonable hours. As a matter of fact, I have reduced the sitting hours for today by half an hour. They go home at half past six instead of seven o’clock. I think they should be very thankful. I do not think members are overworked sitting in the House from a quarter past two until seven in the evening, and some evenings until half past six. I do not think that those members who have been here many years—I am not speaking about the new members—will have any objection to sitting the hours we do at the present time. But I am quite prepared to consider reducing the hours further still if hon. members want it, but then they will have to work harder and then we might have night sittings for a change again. Then, instead of sitting from a quarter past two until seven at night, we can sit from a quarter past two until half past five; but then we will have to sit on Saturdays too. I do not think hon. members would like that.

To sum up, I do not think that there is any real support for the hon. member’s motion. First of all, I think two sessions a year would be something that would be quite unacceptable. Two sessions would mean two formal openings of Parliament. But worst of all, we would probably have two motions of no confidence and just imagine having to listen to all that nonsense we hear with the motion of no confidence from that side of the House twice a year! I mean, even contemplating that is enough to put you off this motion completely. But apart from that, I think that Parliament is working very efficiently. I think we should be very proud of Parliament and the way it is working. I want to put it to the hon. member for Bezuidenhout that this is one of the most efficient Parliaments in any country in the world. I have also read what happens in the parliaments of other countries, and of all the democratic countries, this is one of the most efficient parliaments in the world. I think it is working very well, indeed. I think this is also one of the best behaved parliaments in the world, something of which we can really be proud. We know what happens in other parliaments. We have read about it. Even in the House of Commons, which is the Mother of Parliaments, the most scandalous scenes have occurred. We do not have incidents such as a Miss Develin walking up to a Minister and slapping his face. I think we should really be proud of our Parliament. I am. [Interjections.] I do not know whether that hon. member is. We have a Parliament of this caliber, because we have a good Speaker who looks after the House and keeps order. That is one of the reasons. Apart from that, frankly, I think that our members do not only accept, but are very proud of the traditions and conventions of Parliament and the way that Parliament has functioned over the years. I think that we should continue that way. I do not think that Parliament will improve or become more efficient by sitting a full year. It would rather become more inefficient. There would be more loafing and less work. So, under those circumstances I am afraid that I cannot accept the motion.

Mr. Speaker, we have just listened with the usual keen attention to the hon. the Minister of Transport, because what he says, even if we cannot always agree with it or see the logic of it, is always blunt enough to be understood; so while we have not agreed with the hon. the Minister of Transport, we have at least understood what he has said to us. What he has said to us is that Parliament is a machine; Parliament is an efficient machine; its job is to pass legislation and to approve financial measures. Sir, if this is the concept of Parliament, if this is all Parliament is about, if this is why nations elect a parliament, then he is entirely right; then we do not need more time, we need less time. Then we do not need longer sessions or more sitting days, we need fewer sitting days, and the more efficient Parliament grows, the more our sitting time can be reduced until we sit for only a day. Sir, the point of this motion really is entirely different from that contemplated by the hon. the Minister. We grant him the efficiencies which have been introduced; we grant him that the procedures have been streamlined. What we are pleading for is something entirely different. We see Parliament as a living organism in our society. There is no question that in a modern society government has to play an increasingly active role. Government in the modern technological society has got to contemplate complexities, difficulties and problems far greater than was the case in the past. Who, Sir, can contemplate the future of South Africa over even a relatively short period without recognizing that social, economic, community, industrial and financial adjustments will have to be made because all these things are growing more complex and we will have real problems; we may have crises. We have to deal with these problems and we have to solve them. In the next quarter of a century we will have more urgent problems to solve than we will have had at any other time in our history. Sir, the solution of these problems is very largely a task of government; government obviously has a responsibility to handle these problems, but, Sir, when we talk of government, increasingly at grip with these crowding problems, we do not think of government as totally isolated from Parliament, as totally isolated from the people, as a completely separate political machine which merely does these things. We see the Executive as closely linked to Parliament, as operating in harness with Parliament, as getting advice and help from Parliament, as accepting criticism from Parliament where it is due, but at all times operating as a working democracy, with Parliament playing its full part. Sir if government is going to be engaged in this greater and more pressing and more urgent task and Parliament is not to grow with it, if Parliament is not to accompany it along the road of governing a greater technological South Africa, then Parliament gets left behind; Parliament will not be competent to be a partner to government in this great task which lies before us. I can understand what the hon. the Minister is saying to me, but I cannot accept that in looking at this problem he is looking to the future. I suspect he is looking to the past. He referred to the past 30 years of his experience. We respect the great experience which he has gained in this House and, very often, the use to which he has put it, but we are dealing here with a new problem. It was once said of the Bourbons that they forgot nothing and they learned nothing. Sir, we are talking not about what happened in the past. There are men who can come to this House and tell us what happened in the past and justify what happened in the past and use this as a basis to plot our future. The future is in some ways unpredictable but we can recognize at least the extent of the problems lying ahead of us. I believe implicitly that Parliament has a task to play in this future. Its task lies not in neglect and lagging behind the processes of modern government; its task lies in providing a kind of balance against a growing centralization, the growing strength of a central bureaucracy, a great technical bureaucracy which will grow in order to cope with those very complex problems which beset modern society. It is inevitable that there will be such a bureaucracy, but this bureaucracy must be balanced. This is why people send us to Parliament. It is perfectly easy, especially in a dictatorial state, to place at the centre of things a small government guided by a highly trained technocracy. That is one way of running a country; but we have another need as well. We believe that this technocratic approach, this over-centralization, must at least be balanced by a Parliament which brings directly into the forum of debate the views of the greatly assorted peoples who inhabit this country. This is the task of Parliament, over and beyond what the hon. the Minister has described. We agree that its duty is to pass legislation and to approve financial measures, certainly. But it has this other task as well. It brings here the voice of the people; it brings the sentiments, the balancing effect of people who come here directly from many parts of the country. I hope the Minister agrees with me, for I do believe that they provide a levelling and a balancing effect in our public life. It is not good enough to be ruled by bureaucrats, by technocrats, by civil servants, however efficient they are. I think we have very good ones but we need more than that in our system of Government. Therefore we plead that Parliament should be given more time, but not more time, as the hon. the Minister has suggested, to look at each other vacantly, with no work to do. Sir, we have work to do. We have more work—and I speak now at the moment for the Opposition—than we know how to do. We do not have a public service behind us. We have no assistance. We have to do the work ourselves. In a hundred days we have to deal with a hundred Bills. We read these Bills without help or guidance. We have to do it ourselves in our committees. We have to study the problems of the day. We have to study the trends of the day. We get these enormous masses of information which we must read. At the pace at which we work, within the short session of Parliament, one hundred days, it is almost impossible to cope with this work. We do it under great strain. We believe that extra time will be occupied, not with leisure as the hon. the Minister suggests, but with more time for work, more time for research, more time for reflection, more time for thought, more time for adequate preparation, more time for effective and efficient debate. Sir, this is what we want to bring to Parliament. We do not ask for a lot of idle days. We have in view that the time of Parliament should be more effectively used by better contributions. We are ready to admit that in the time available to us, within the limits of our own limitations, we cannot bring to Parliament as much as we should like to do. Sir, this is what we seek. We seek the opportunity to serve Parliament better. One of the things we do need is time.

As far as the Opposition is concerned, I am sure the hon. the Minister will agree that the Opposition has a vital role to play, whatever he may think of any particular Opposition at any particular time. It has a vital role to play in the parliamentary system, and the better that Opposition is and the more effectively it does its job, the better Parliament is and the better the Government is.

We have come to this House with this private motion. We say we believe there is not sufficient time to do our work properly. We believe the time that is available is too concentrated. It is concentrated within five months and we have to work to the point of exhaustion. We believe that if we had only as much time as is now allowed, the odd hundred days, but spread more evenly across the year, we would have more time for reflection and more time for contact with our constituencies and with all the various interests which try to speak to us and whom we have no time to speak to. Sir, we have dealt with the technical, personal and practical problems. These are very real. They are very real in the present system. In the five-month system there are problems. Whole families have to be disrupted. People have to move down. Ministries have to be split and there is no question that there is inconvenience. It could be argued, I believe effectively, that if we had a number of short sessions or, shall we say, a longer continuous session with intervals in between, it would be possible to do all these things more efficiently and with less interruption of peoples’ personal convenience and their private lives. I know, for example, that a civil servant in Pretoria—I have been one myself—is faced with the problem of coming to Cape Town for a parliamentary session. He has to face an absence from his family for a period of five months or so and he has to determine whether he is going to break up a stable home with schooling, with all the arrangements made for stability in that domestic set-up; whether he is going to uproot the whole lot, bring them to Cape Town, usually in unsatisfactory conditions and let his house and take the consequences. It is a most unsatisfactory system as it is. It has been greatly relieved by the modern techniques which are available: Improved telephones, improved communication services, improved transport services and now we even have a telephone which transmits documents instantaneously. These communications have improved things, but they have not improved the practical and private difficulties of the people who come down here for a very long period of time. It would be much simpler for members—I believe most members—for the Press, for civil servants, to come here for a short period. You can then leave your family and your children at school. If the father is away for only two months—shall we say eight or ten weeks—and he can return and even for the odd weekend, he can maintain the stability of his home. He can come down here, serve his few weeks and he can go back and come down here again. It is possible on a more spread-out system to maintain contact, to maintain stability and far more so than by insisting that people come down here for a whole five months, because then they either have to uproot their entire family or break with their family for half a year.

I cannot believe that the practical arguments are as great as claimed for the concept of having a more spread-out session. There are many advantages in spreading it out more. I believe that from the point of view of the parliamentary officers it would also be better. They face the same problem of tackling over the period of five months, an enormous pressure of business which has to be virtually completed in many respects within those five months. I believe that if they were to operate over the year and if there were gaps, intervals of six weeks or a month between each session, they would have time to summarize, to collate, to assess, to prepare so that each session could be dealt with efficiently on its own and the necessary work and research and preparation could go on and then they could prepare for the next session. I believe it would ease the strain on the parliamentary officers who are also so necessary for the efficient functioning of Parliament and therefore of government.

Reference has been made to the Press. I entirely agree that the Press is a most necessary part of the whole system. Apart from providing the Press with what it requires which is news, possibly over a longer period and in a more digestible form if spread over a longer period, I believe that the Press and its members’ private lives would also benefit if they were able to make these arrangements on a more spread-out basis.

I believe, most of all, that the public, to whom we are in the last resort responsible, would have greater confidence if they could see Parliament doing its work carefully, taking its time, devoting more time to committee work, studying Bills and perhaps having less time in actual session, but working according to the modern systems of government by spending a great deal of their time in committee preparing and studying Bills. Where reform has taken place in the modern parliamentary systems, notably, for example, in a country like Sweden, or a country like Germany, or a country like Austria for that matter, one notices that far greater emphasis is placed on the committee work of Parliament. It is not necessary in their view that all members should be on display in the House of Parliament all the time. It is accepted that the bulk of the work is done in committee and that when Parliament meets, it comes here to pass the formal stages and the final stages of the Bills, but the bulk of the work, the actual close examination of the content of legislation is done by experts working in committee. This takes time; time must be allowed for this. This is why these Parliaments sit for only three days per week and not, as the hon. the Minister suggests, because they are lazy and because they like to look at each other since there is nothing else to do. They are working during those days when they are not sitting. I do not believe that once the public understand how such a system works, they would take it amiss of this Parliament if it gathered in this Assembly only three days a week.

I looked at some of the other countries. We find for example that Sweden which, as I say, concentrates very largely on the committee system, has a Spring session running from January to May and an Autumn session running from October to the end of the year. In Austria they also have a Spring session and an Autumn session. In other words two sessions each running about three months. In the Australian Commonwealth Parliament, although it is a federal Parliament and therefore a great deal of work is done in the States, they nevertheless sit from February to June each year and from August to November. In Canada they sit from January to June and from September to December. In the United Kingdom they theoretically sit from October to October, the whole year round, but as we know, they have various recesses. They have a recess over Christmas, they have a recess over Easter, they have a Summer recess over the months of July, August and September. However, in principle they sit all the year and they can gather to deal with legislation or with matters of public importance at any time during the whole of the 12 months.

We, in our Republic, have for historical reasons depended very much on the British system in the formulation of our own procedures in this House. This is a rich heritage and it has been of great advantage to us. I should like to tell this House that recently I spoke to a good number of members of Parliament in the House of Commons and they are extremely concerned about the functioning of their Parliament in the modern society. They are doubtful whether the Westminster system as it has evolved and even as it has been adapted, is fully suited to the needs of a modern society. They believe that one needs to look more closely at the working of modern government, the demands placed upon modern government and to adapt Parliament as a lively partner of government, as a living entity, with a duty and a role in government to meet the needs of a modern society.

I believe that we, too, need to look at this. The answers we find here will probably not be the same as those found in other countries. We have our own needs and our own characteristics, but I believe that at least we must look at it and that is what the motion asks. We are not asking anybody to commit himself to one system or another; we are not asking anybody to take sides at this stage as between one system and another. We believe, however, that the time has come to look hard at our system and perhaps to consider whether some of the axiomatically accepted ideas, the truisms, are still true. For example, the hon. the Minister said: “Suid-Afrika is ’n klein ou landjie met lang afstande.” Is this still true? Are we still a “klein ou landjie” and are the “afstande” still so long? These are truisms which must be re-examined. South Africa is in fact becoming a very important country in the world. It will assume an increasingly great importance to the world and its “afstande” are getting shorter all the time for reasons which are obvious. We need to re-examine some of these premises and wee need to re-examine our needs in the light of the demands which have been placed upon the Government in South Africa, and therefore on Parliament.

Mr. Speaker, I think the mere fact that I have to rise at this late stage of this debate and participate in it is a sufficient indication to the hon. introducer of this motion that his motion is not a very substantial one. It has been an exceptional occasion this afternoon …

Was it a joke?

Yes, it is a joke. It has been an exceptional occasion this afternoon in that we have on this basis been able to debate the optimum utilization of the time of this hon. House. If there is one point which clearly emerged, it is that all of us proceed from the standpoint that we advocate a better functioning of the House. Before I proceed I should like to refer to a few specific points made by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout, in regard to which I definitely cannot agree with him. But before coming to that I just want to say that I think the hon. Opposition, before they introduced this motion, should have introduced two other motions.

This is a private member’s motion.

Very well, if it is a private member’s motion the hon. member for Kensington ought then to have introduced two other motions before this one. We had a reasonably peaceful and quiet time, and we conducted the debate on quite a high level, but it seems to me as if one of the members is now entering this House unaware of this situation here …

He has just come from the students.

Yes, he has probably come from the students. The hon. member for Kensington ought to have introduced two other motions before introducing this one. The first motion should have been that South Africa should have only one capital, and the second one that the South African member of Parliament should be remunerated on the same basis as the American member of Parliament or the American Senator. If they had introduced those two motions and had had them passed, we could have proceeded with this one. Once we accept the situation of our separated capitals, the whole idea of either a continuous session of Parliament or two sessions per year is entirely unpractical. It cannot be argued away, for it remains an unpractical matter. I shall return to this subsequently when I point out that when it comes to the executive authority, when it comes to the government and the administration of a country, it is definitely harmful if the political head, the State head, the administrative head of a department has to be away from this head office for such a long time.

There is another point as well in regard to which I respectfully differ with the hon. member for Bezuidenhout. This is the fact that he said that, when we debate this matter, we should not do so with regard to our own interests, but that we should do so with regard to what is best for South Africa. I want to differ with him in this sense that I do not think he can imply or intend to imply that if one were to oppose the hon. member’s motion he would be placing his own interests before the best interests of South Africa. I hope to be able to inform the hon. member that we will in fact be able, through streamlining our parliamentary system, to shorten the sessions instead of lengthening them, and that this will in fact be in the best interests of South Africa.

There are two other points in regard to which I differ with the hon. member. The first was when he said that we assembled on 2nd February after the Parliament had been “on vacation” for eight months.

For almost eight months.

Yes, or on vacation for almost eight months. The issue here is not the word “almost”, the issue is the fact that he said Parliament was “on vacation”. Parliament was in recess and I do not know of any member of this Parliament—or at least on this side of the House—who went on vacation for eight months.

However, Parliament is not functioning then.

No, the hon. member used the word “vacation” with a special intonation to that word. It implied that we were idle, and I must contradict the hon. member on that point. Parliament was not on vacation. The Ministries were working at full pitch, the public service was working and most members of the House of Assembly were carrying out one of their most important duties, viz. to liaise with their voters and to report back to them on the activities of Parliament during the previous session. The officials here in the House of Assembly as such were also busy.

There are two other points I should like to clear up with the hon. member. He said that there was in fact no parliamentary supervision over the Government. As I understand the development of the parliamentary system, and as we have developed it into a responsible form of government, it is not for Parliament to maintain supervision over the activities of the Government. The Government is there, assembled by the leader of the strongest party at the request of the head of State, in our case the President. This Government is responsible to Parliament for the way in which it governs the country, the way in which it spends public money, and is consequently dependent on Parliament’s support for the Bills it wishes to pilot through Parliament. That is the function of Parliament. The hon. member for Von Brandis said he could agree with the hon. the Leader of the House that if that was what we meant by Parliament, it was all very well, but that that was not what a Parliament was. One thing we must guard against in South Africa and against which all the parliaments of the world should guard against, is Parliament developing into a mere talk shop. That is where the word Parliament comes from, viz. from the French word “parler”. The hon. member will know that at one stage a very unfavourable connotation was attached to the word Parliament because it was regarded as merely being a talk shop. For that reason I want to say that parliamentary supervision is not necessary. The Government of the day is responsible to Parliament for its administration of the country. This Parliament can by way of one day’s sitting call a Government of the day to order if it should be guilty of gross or irresponsible mismanagement. The length or duration of a parliamentary session has nothing to do with the way in which a country is being governed, with the intensity, the alertness and the dedication of the Government and of the members of Parliament as such, which ultimately leads to an effective Parliament and effective national government.

The hon. member also said, and the hon. member for Von Brandis supported him in this, that our present system leads to an excess of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is a situation which can develop in any democratic or undemocratic system of government. It is, once again, not the system which is responsible for bureaucracy. I want to say that the best guarantee, the best counter to bureaucracy is the wide-awake member of Parliament who does two things. The most important of these is that he should have his ear to the ground and should have contact with his voters. The second is that he should be accessible to his voters so that they can keep him informed of any deficiencies and examples of bureaucracy. The third thing he should also do is to be prepared, whenever he encounters this, to act fearlessly as representative of the people against bureaucracy. The hon. member for Bezuidenhout also said—and then I will have dealt with him—that the system which we now have of a pressure cooker parliamentary session leads to an excess of autocracy. I want to tell him that the best counter to and guarantee against autocracy in a democratic set-up is a strong, alert Opposition. If the Opposition fails in its duty, the problem arises that the Government becomes autocratic. An Opposition ceases to fulfil its role if it does not have its finger on the pulse of national affairs. I leave it at that. I do not want to pass judgment on this Opposition this afternoon—not because I think it is not possible to do so, but because I think it would not be in the spirit of the debate to pass judgment on them this afternoon.

In conclusion I just want to say something to the hon. member for Bezuidenhout. He said that the Opposition is sometimes surprised at legislation which is laid upon the Table.

The entire Parliament is surprised.

Let him say that this applies to all of us if he wishes, but we on this side of the House know when a Bill comes up for discussion. Both sides of the House are informed in advance by means of their study groups of envisaged legislation. I wish to say that it has never really seemed to me as if the hon. Opposition has been surprised by legislation. They have always been able to talk and keep on talking about legislation as if they had prepared themselves for it for a year. One can point out hon. members on that side of the House who do this time and again—and not only in respect of legislation—they can talk indefinitely on anything. Sir, it is clear to hon. members that I do not agree with them, and I have already furnished the most important reason why this is so. Apart from the fact that I cannot agree with them, for the stated reasons, it is the duty of a government, an executive authority, not only to make laws, but to administer them, and one cannot expect it to spend all its time in Parliament. That is one of the most important reasons. For good national administration it is absolutely essential that the political head of the department, the Minister, should devote as much time as possible to his department. In our system, where he must also be a member of one of the two Houses, one cannot expect him to sit all year in Parliament and in addition see to the proper administration of the department which falls under him. But apart from that, our Ministers are probably among the most accessible Ministers in the world. Tremendous demands are being made on them. Not only is it they who have to deal with the legislation of the country; there is also the administration of that legislation. In addition to that they constantly have to make public appearances, and then they still have their own constituencies to look after. If we were in addition to expect them to have to attend continuous sessions of Parliament we would be making tremendous demands on them which would eventually be to the detriment of national government. I believe, and with this I want to conclude, that it is possible for us to make our parliamentary system, as it is at present, even more streamlined. If we give free reign to our thoughts on this matter and put our heads together we will find that we in fact have surplus time available. I want to say to the hon. the Leader of the House that we should please not have to sit on Saturday mornings. I really think that we could have the whole of Friday off, and need not sit. But what I have in mind is not that nothing should be done or that we should turn it into a long weekend. The time can be spent in fulfilling other parliamentary or caucus duties. Without taking leave on a sitting day we can go to our constituencies to do our work there. I believe that we have surplus time available. Those of us who have not been sitting in this House for very long realize, however, that time is set aside for specific subjects, such as legislative debating points and the discussion of Ministers’ Votes. Many of those specified times, as this afternoon for example, are devoted entirely to speeches for the sake of the procedure and Standing Order rules of the House. For that reason I maintain that if we are able to avoid this, we still have surplus time on hand. How many times do we not have to sit here listening to a speech which is simply being made in order to use up time.

But there is something else of which the Opposition can take specific note, and I am saying this in all sincerity. This is the custom of the Opposition to call for divisions. I know that this is something which the Opposition feels very strongly about. However, hours of session time are lost in respect of divisions which are useless. This is particularly the case during Committee Stages where a vote is taken on one clause after the other. I do not want to say that the Opposition may never demand a division. However, they know what the situation in the country is, and the world outside does too. I think they could very easily have their protests against a clause recorded after having demanded a division on a specific subject during the Second Reading.

Mr. Speaker, I want to resume my seat. I have again succeeded in using up my time. I think we would stagnate if we were to cease thinking occasionally about how we could modernize our parliamentary system and the business here in the House in order to keep pace with the demands of the times. We must do this here in South Africa itself. Overseas people have been impressed by the wonderful way in which our Parliament functions. I do not think we need always refer to what America, Australia, France and England are doing. We have a wonderful parliamentary system which functions properly. We have with our ingenuity, from a foundation which we found in the British parliamentary system, developed this system into what it is today. I think we have every reason to be proud of it.

Mr. Speaker, it was quite a surprising admission that came from the hon. member for Waterkloof—surprising in that he admitted it but not surprising to us really—when he told us that he actually got up to talk out time. Now I can see what the hon. the Leader of the House meant when he said that if more time was allowed to parliamentarians it would be wasted.

Briefly, there is a basic difference in approach between the two sides of the House. What the hon. the Leader of the House really indicated to us was that he views Parliament as some sort of legislative sausage factory and that the quicker you produce laws the better Parliament it is. That is not what Parliament is all about and he knows it. It might be the view of other hon. members on that side, but that hon. member knows enough about Parliament, having been here so long, to realize that Parliament is the meeting-place of the people in the first place. It is the place where matters of the moment and of public importance must be debated. And, indeed, if legislation is brought forward, it should be the place where members, particularly of the Opposition but also of the Government, must have an opportunity to examine, test and sift.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 32 and motion lapsed.