The Auckland Star. WITH WHICH ABB INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. MONDAY, APRIL 28, 1930. PARNELL AND PARTIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 98, 28 April 1930, Page 6

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

MONDAY, APRIL 28, 1930. PARNELL AND PARTIES.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance t And the good that we can do.

Reformers lived so long with a Government which had no policy that perhaps it is natural that they should be bewildered and peeved by contact with a different sort of Government. At any rate, we find any excuse being seized to attack the Government. It is charged with sins of commission and omission, no credit is given, and these Reform critics do not even take Lord Melbourne's historic advice to hesure to say the same thing. For example, Sir Joseph Ward's policy of land taxation has drawn almost as many tears from the big landowners as John McKenzie's crusade did forty years ago. But the Reform candidate for Parnell considers it a reproach that the promise to break up large estates is so far from fulfilment. The Government, he says, has spent £600,000, but only 154 men have been placed on the land. We wonder if Mr. Endean has any idea of the preliminaries that are necessary before big estates are subdivided for settlement. The process is slightly more complicated than cutting,, up a suburban paddock for building sections. The Act of last session imposing special taxation, one purpose of which is to induce landowners to subdivide, is much less than a year old. As the Minister of Lands showed in his able speech on Thursday, the Government has been active in extending land settlement. His Government has a land policy, and it is putting it into operation. The Lands Department is more active than it has been for years. The last Government had nothing but a policy of

despair

A witty retort "by Mr. Forbes to the Reform candidate may be commended to the notice of those who complain of the slowness of the Government. Mr. Endean had likened the Government to a bullock team struggling through the mud, with Mr. Holland as driver. Mr. Forbes did not content himself with rebutting the charge that the Labour Party controlled the Government; he asked who made the mud. The reply to this question does not have to be stated. The United Party entered into a barren inheritance. There was a deficit in the Treasury. There was no land policy. Advances to settlers were heavily in arrears. There was no serious attempt to grapple with unemployment. We are not in agreement with the whole of the Government's policy, but we ask the Parnell electors to consider the state of affairs in 1928 and. look at what has been done. The national accounts have been balanced, a land policy has been framed and put into operation, arrears of advances have been overtaken, and much—to be followed, it is hoped, by morehas been done for the unemployed. The Government has widened the relief system, and is framing a permanent policy. Such things speak far more effectively than the contrasts party critics draw, regardless of conditions, between promises and performances.