The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1925 THE LABOUR PLATFORM.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 243, 14 October 1925, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1925 THE LABOUR PLATFORM.

For thtl cause that lacks assistance, For the: wrong that needs resistance, For thn future in the distance, And thm good that we van do.

The manifesto just issued by the New Zealand Xabour party to the electors supplies ample ground for reflection and criticism- We need not dwell upon the preamble in which the Labour leaders, as usual, claim that their party has been "the only real Opposition" during the past three years; nor need we waste time over the unjustifiable and disingenuous assertion fthat the Liberals have already agreed to come to terms with the Reformers after the election. These tactics are unfortunately characteristic of the methods of political warfare favoured iby Mr. Holland and his friends, who are at least consistent in employing them. Tlie ultimate object of the party, as everybody should know, is "the socialisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange," and on this one sweeping phrase the programme in all its details has been carefully built up. Considering its extremely comprehensive character,, we may derive some consolation from, the promise that all the changes l>ere set forth are to be accomplished by "constitutional means." But the general impression produced on us by the manifesto is to the effect that it will take- a great deal more than this assurance to render it acceptable to the people of New Zealand. v

Among the many conspicuous "planks" in the Lafoour "platform" the following deserve special notice: Wages and salaries aa-e to be restored to the 1914 standard—a suggestion which, if it implies amy immediate steps in that direction, bespeaks woeful ignorance of the econoanie and financial condition of the world 10-day. A housing programme on a laTge scale is to be attempted, ■though there is no indication of the way in which the perennial difficulty of building decent homes within the means of the workers is to be solved in practice. There is to be a State-owned shipping service, in spite of the recent painful experiences of the United States and the Australian Commonwealth in this direction. There is to be a State Bank with a rural credit branch, apparently to encourage farmers to mortgage their land more* easily, in defiance of all sound banking principles. We can hardly expect much enlightenment from this quarter on abstrafct questions of finance. But we suggost that something more than resentment at large profits and big dividends as needed as the basis for such a new anid risky departure as a State Bank, and we would have been glad of some indication that Mr. Holland and his colleagues at least appreciate the risks involved in State bank note issues and the dangers of "political" money. A "sound" immigration policy, whatever that may onean; "adequate" pensions for everybody; endowment of motherhood; commissions on the basic wage, the cost of living, and the British Empire; and an expression of confidence in the League of Nations, make up most of the balance of this h%hly varied programme, though we are mot quite clear whether the "settlement of disputes on the basis of arbitration" is meant to apply only to international affairs or to such local industrial matters as shipping strikes as well.*

We have still to mention the two most important practical proposals put forward by the Labour party —readjustment of taxation and the settlement of the land question by State purchase. As to the land problem, it would appear from a comparison of the text of this manifesto with the published utterances of leading Labour members that the proposed reform lends itself to several very different interpretations. It is not our present business to distinguish between the various possible readings of the text, but to emphasise the fact that this widely advertised reform—putting the most favourable construction upon it—is nothing more than a modified version of the original land for settlement purchase system, which was one ef the many benefits conferred on New Zealand hy Liberalism over 30 years ago. And the same criticism applies in principle to Labour's taxation proposals. To readjust taxation so as to lower the cost of living, and to throw the heaviest fiscal burden upon the shoulders best able to bear it —these are the fundamental principles of taxation as preached and practised here by the pioneers of Liberalism a generation back. And if we survey the whole Labour programme from end to end in an unprejudiced spirit we are driven to the conclusion that everything of real value in it is simply borrowed without acknowledgment from Liberalism; while the novelties are crude or dangerous proposals, based on no sound political principle or practical experiemce. Liberalism and water— with a flavoxir of doctrinaire Marxism thrown, in—that is the only inducement which Labour offers us to-day to discard the Ballance-Seddon tradition and to "nationalise everything in sight."