BUDGET DEBATE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 65, Issue 269, 24 August 1945, Page 5

BUDGET DEBATE

DRIFT TO THE TOWNS. POLICY OF HIGHER WAGES (P.A.) WELLINGTON, Aug. 23. The Budget debate was resumed in the House of Representatives to-day. Mr D. C. Kidd (Opposition, Waitaki) said the Labour Government had claimed that it would help the small farmers but it had proved the worst friend the small farmer ever had. There had been more land aggregation under Labour than ever before, and that was one of the problems the Minister of Lands would have to grapple with to-day. In the runal districts of the South Island there were empty houses everywhere. The Hon. B. Roberts: Not up our way. •Mr T. H. McCombs (Government, Lyttelton): There are plenty down our way. Mr Kidd said people had gone off farms into towns because of the Government’s policy of higher wages and shorter hours. If primary production was the key to the country’s prosperity that drift had not only to be stopped, it would have to be reversed or the time would come when they would not be able to grow enough to feed our own population. Farmers could not get good labourers because of the Labour policy which taxed the farmer so that he could not pay them and offered him better conditions in the towns. Farmers’ sons were leaving the land but they should be encouraged to go on farms of their own. They should be provided with cheap money and all the amenities of the city at city prices. Labour had promised to put hydroelectric power into every home in the country, hut there were thousands of farmers’ homes still without electricity. Power houses were set up and power was taken to cities away from farms around where it was produced. When the National Party became the Government they would give the farmers electric power and would supply them with electrical equipment free of sales tax and duty. Nationalisation of Bank. Mr R. M. Algie (Opposition, Remuera) said he felt that the Minister of Finance must have suffered when Mr Langstone was expounding his financial principles the previous evening, because much of what Mr Langstone had said was hot air. Mr Langstone was the high priest of funny money. He had claimed that taking over the Bank of New Zealand was the most important question to-day. Mr Algie said he could not agree with that because he considered that rehabilitation, housing, full employment and a proper standard of living were more important. Mr Langstone: They all involve finance. Mr Algie said that was so, but so had the war and it had been financed without taking over the Bank and he believed that the peace could be won without doing so. Mr Langstone had told his own electorate that there was no political motive in talcing over the Bank, but he had told the Labour Conference if they took over the Bank they could win all 80 seats. Mr A. S. Richards (Government, Roskill): That is what stings. Mr Algie said that for the first time he and the Member for Roskill were in agreement. It did sting, because in his opinion if there was one thing above all others to he dreaded it was a one-party Legislature. Mr Algie dealt with Mr Langstone’s statements concerning the Bank’s early history and the 1894 crisis. He said this apostle of funny money was unsound because his figures did not agree. He bandied millions about as if they were of no importance. Out of the misfortune of this banking concern the Government of New Zealand won many advantages. It ultimately got four out of the six seats on the directorate. It got control of a business which did not cost it anything. In the last six years the Bank had paid the Government £.4,000,000 in taxation and dividends. The Government appointed its own auditor and the Bank had to pay for his services. The Government also got the right to 500,000 preference shaves and one-third of a»y new capital issued. All this represented a pretty hard bargain driven with the Bank, a bargain which made Ministers of to-day look like amateurs.