LIBERAL LEADER SUPPORTS BUDGET.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 98, 28 April 1938, Page 7

LIBERAL LEADER SUPPORTS BUDGET.

AUSTERE AND HONEST

Labour Speaker Condemns

Burden of Costs

"FALTERING FINANCE."

British Official Wireless

(Received 12.30 p.m.)

RUGBY, April 27

The debato on the Budget was opened for Labour by Mr. F. W. Pet hick-Lawrence (E." Edinburgh), who thought that, as a peace-time Budget, it was not merely depressing but deplorable.

He said it placed burdens on every section of the community by adding to the taxation, and tieing up posterity with increasing burdens of debt. Faltering finance had marked the conduct of the last war, he continued, but this time it had started before any war bad begun.

The Government was asking for unity and sacrifices. For a policy which would secure the world against war, the Labour party and the whole country would face great sacrifices, but the Opposition could see no evidence that the policy of the Government was one to command the united sentiment of the nation.

It seemed rather that they were asking for sacrifices, not for things for which unity could undoubtedly be obtained, but for a triumph of aggression, and suppression of democracy.

Sir Archibald Sinclair, Leader of the Liberal party, described the Budget as austere and honest. There was no doubt that Parliament would pass the defence expenditure, because all parties were convinced of the necessity of rearmament. Foreign Governments would make a great mistake if they reckoned on any faltering so long as the threat existed of aggression from Powers who were still using war as an instrument of national policy. However, he thought that the strength of national unity depended on the diligence, firmness and resource which, the Government showed in pursuing its construction of a policy of peace.

Sir Alan Anderson (Con.. City of London) said the Budget was recognised as a Budget of crisis. He was glad that it was so as that fact would reverberate through the world and the world would realise that the nation intended j to be strong and united, and would face I the consequences.

The great contribution of Britain to civilisation was the idea of freedom, and he looked upon these annual Budgets as a test of their profession of the desire that freedom and democracy should survive.