POLITICAL CO-OPERATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 269, 13 November 1935, Page 6

POLITICAL CO-OPERATION.

It needed courage to affirm, at a time when party feeling is running high, that the Government this Dominion needs is a new National Government in which the Labour Party would be represented. Mr. Coates expressed that view yesterday, and he went so far as to say that if he were the obstacle to the formation of such a Government he would willingly and cheerfully renounce his claim to membership of it. We believe that no development in the political field would better please the majority of people in New Zealand than a coalition of the kind Mr. Coates evidently has in mind. The practical obstacles to the formation of such a coalition are great, but they are not insuperable. Mr. Coates, as leader of the Reform Party, hesitated long before he joined the United Government. Yet, when once the step had been taken, it, was not regretted, for both parties, and the majority of electors who endorsed the Coalition Government in 1931, realised that in the circumstances of the times strong government was essential. The need is no less to-day. Recently the Government adopted the wise course of consulting the Labour leaders before introducing the sanctions legislation. It did so because national unity on such a question was most desirable, and because it was confident that the Labour Party, when informed of the facts of the situation, would agree that the legislation proposed was inevitable. Is there any fundamental reason why the domestic problems of the country could not be approached in the same spirit?