SINS OF REFORM.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 259, 2 November 1925, Page 8

SINS OF REFORM.

FURIOUS OVER BOGIES. SLASHING ATTACK ON GOVERNMENT. On Saturday, Mr. W. E. Parry addressed a very large meeting at the corner of Vincent and Cook Streets, and received a very attentive hearing. Ho vigorously attacked the Reform Government, and said that it had nothing to recommend itself to the community. It could hot place its finger on one piece of original legislation it had placed upon the Statute Book, which had established a foundation which could be built upon in the future with advantage to the masses of the people. Reform was completely bankrupt of policy, and in order to cover up its glaring failures and broken pledges was now waxing into a fury about the dangers of the policy put forward by the Labour party. It would discuss the affairs of any other country, but would not face its own failures in this country. "They have no land policy themselves, either to settle the New Zealand people, or the immigrants they are bringing

here," said Mr. Parry. When the opportunity of their lives was offered after the war ended, with plenty of money in hand, a sympathetic public, and land of their own to settle, what happened? With this golden opportunity laud was bought from the weal-, thy landowners at fictitious prices. One set of farmers were displaced by another, the former coming to the cities to play bowls, while the latter paid the mortgage. In Hawke's Bay alone, we had 128 persons in possession of 1,748,037 acres, more than half the land under occupation in the whole province. Forty-eight held 1,180,954 acres, while wo had 179 land owners in New Zealand who monopolised between them upwards of 3,500,000 acres, ranging from 102,000 to 110,000 acres, of which the total unimproved value is over £7,000,000. Besides these huge holdings of substantial quality we had thousands of acres of Crown land which could have been put into cultivation. The result of their policy has been not only disastrous to the soldier, but a huge loss to the nation.. The Reform Government came into office as a non-borrowing Government, definitely pledged to break up laud aggregation which had increased from 750 holdings to 1080, with £20,000 and upwards of unimproved value. They came into reform the Upper House by a system of proportional representation and it remains to-day as it was in 1912. They pledged themselves to introduce sickness and unemployment insurance, the abolition of the second ballot, and to put a substantial substitute in its place, and not a single one of those pledges have been redeemed. They have increased the national debt in 13 years by 140 millions, while the previous Government bad incurred a debt of 81 millions in 56 years. They have reduced the wages of the wage and salary-earners by 16 millions in four years, and gave remissions in taxation to the wealthy of over ten millions in the same period. They have failed to grapple with the housing question, and in place of overcoming this difficulty we are getting further behind. A vote of thanks and confidence was moved by an old resident of 90 years of age and carried, with cheers for Labour.