Sir George Grey introduced a Friendly Societies Bill, which was taken up by the Government. The Council did not try to amend it, but rejected it by a large majority. Another measure which was supported by both sides of the House was the Selectors’ Revaluation Bill. It was intended to extend relief to tenants who had not been reached by similar measures of relief in former years. The Council said that those tenants should not receive relief unless the Bill was amended so as to give power to all pastoral tenants of the Crown—in other words, as was pointed out at the time, squatters and runholders—to get their rents reconsidered, and, if possible, reduced. The Government could not consider a proposal of that kind, and the Bill had to be abandoned.
Sir John McKenzie’s Land Bill was received with more courtesy than his Land for Settlements Bill. It went into committee in the Council, but it was treated so badly there that he hardly recognised it when it came back, and he certainly did not feel disposed to acknowledge it. A conference was arranged, at which he endeavoured to meet the Council half way. He compromised on several points, but the Council took everything he offered and gave nothing of any consequence in return. Finding that no good would result from his attempts at a compromise, he withdrew his Bill, saying that he would wait twelve months, and, in the meantime, the Legislative Council would see what would happen to it.
The Council, in short, stood in the road of reform, and, without any compunction, rejected Bill after Bill or altered the measures so that they were practically useless. In this way, the Liberal Party was prevented in its first year of office from putting into operation the elaborate policy which it had been preparing for years, and which had the emphatic approval of the country.
The session of 1891, owing to the obstruction of the Council; was largely a waste of good time. The Liberals, however, sought consolation in the fact that the property tax and its unjust inequalities had ceased to vex the country, and they said that a session which had repealed that obnoxious imposition could not be called a barren one.
