LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 48, 25 August 1943, Page 4

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

"CO-OPERATION" TALK

•Sir, —The Leader of the Opposition sought some information from Mr. Walter Nash in the House of Representatives yesterday and did not get it. Mr. Nash, according to one report, said he was not entitled to get it. Mr. Nash also ejaculated: "And you talk about co-operation!" after Mr. Holland had made the point that information sought had been refused. On September 28, 1939, Mr. J. G. Coates also sought some information from Mr. Nash ■ and was denied it. "Hansard," Volume 256, p. 446, records that Mr. Coates asked Mr. Nash to give the country information about third period import licences, asking if the Minister would not take action without delay and combat a situation in which "the majority of manufacturers would have to close their factories early in the following year because of lack of materials."

Mr. Nash's attitude then provoked Mr. Coates to say: "We on this side of the House, have offered co-operation

. . . but we are entitled to receive a certain amount of reciprocity. To an extent we have received it. I have no fault to find with the Acting Leader of the House (Mr. P. Fraser), whose words and actions have throughout been such as one would rightly expect from a man in his position at a critical time like this. But when we ask the Minister of Finance for explanations and when the country from one end to the other wants to know what is happening, what kind of answers do we get from him? It is well that the country should know, and that the Government and members on the Government side of the House should realise, that such questions are met with hostility and that his answers show an element of arrogance. Questions have been asked that demand a reply —questions that affect one section of the community throughout the length and breadth of the country, but the House and that section of the community are left in complete darkness.

... I want to make it as plain as it is possible to make it that an offer of co-operation means one thing and one thing only. But if that offer is to be met by statements which one would expect from a puny dictator, what can the answer be?—l am, etc., ON THE RECORD.