NOT SERIOUS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 300, 2 October 1935, Page 6

NOT SERIOUS

CHALLENGE TO GOVERNMENT.

MR FORBES’ VIEW OF THE DEMOCRATS.

UNFULFI'LLABLE PROMISES

(Per Press Association).

WELLINGTON, This Day,

“ I do not regard this as a serious challenge to the Government,” .said the Prime Minister (the lit. Hon. G. W. Forbes), commenting on the Democrat platform. “It is a case of bidding without any sense of responsibility or knowing the impossibility of fulfilling such gaudy promises. The Democrat Party has now shown itself to be entirely irresponsible. Everything attractive is promised, including, in the same breath, enormously expensive booms and concessions, though promising to be ready to curtail the money supply from taxation, which is the only source of payment for them. The Government cannot enter into that sort of bidding, as it has to maintain a system of sound finance, knowing the serious consequences to every section of the community if that is departed from. It has to leave the bidding to Labour and. the Democrats, who have no such responsibility. “The two bidding parties hope to dive between them the votes of the unthinking. The most embarrassing thing for either would be to find themselves in office, overloaded with pledges which they must know to-day to be impossible to fulfil after the elections. “It appears to me tlrat the slcy is the only limit of the Democrat bid for votes, and that the Labour Party has occasion to feel some alarm because it looks as if they have been overbid by this policy of gifts for everybody. It is a gamblers’ throw withnothing to lose and just the hope that the electors will not stop to think when they see the glittering baubles. “So far from being a; serious challenge to the Government, the Democrat party has shown that its only desire is for office at any price, with no thought of the real interests of the Dominion.”