TWO COURSES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 192, 16 August 1939, Page 11

TWO COURSES.

FOR NEW ZEALAND.

STAND AND DELIVER BUDGET.

" BOLTING TOWARDS INITIATION." (By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. "This might be called the 'stand and deliver' Budget, because at the point of the bayonet an effort is being made to take from the savers and give to the hard-spenders," declared Mr. F. W. Doidge (National, Tauranga) in the House of Representatives yesterday.

The country committed to two courses, said Mr. Doidge, and they were poles apart. There was the course set by the Minister of Finance, Mr. Nash, at Home, and the course set by the Prime Minister, Mr. Savage. Definitely one cut across the other, because London knew that this Government came into office with a balanced Budget and £40,000,000 at its disposal at Home, {hat in three years the revenue increased by no less than £72,000,000, and that in those three years the Gov? eminent increased public worke expenditure by £70,000,000. ■ Mr. Nash asked London investors to accommodate him with a £33,000,000 loan.

The Government proposed to borrow from the small investors in New Zea- j land, Mr. Doidge said, but the investors I wyuld be very chary about lending. They | knew that the member for Grey Lynn, I Mr. J. A. Lee, had put forward a scheme whereby he would redeem internal loans by cheques drawn on the Reserve Bank, such cheques not to be used in other Government securities. The Government was pursuing a policy that \vas affecting all who were on small fixed incomes, and the country was not drifting but bolting towards inflation. Taxation had increased by 60 per cent since 1935 and indirect taxation was increasing from day to day. The Government had an idea that they were taxing the rich men and letting the small men escape, but there were few rich men in New Zealand and the small men could not escape. The working man was only just beginning to wake up to realise that the Government Mas responsible for wage cuts on a scale not known in New Zealand for a long time because there was no worse wage cut than increasing costs on a i fixed income.

Manufacturers Worried. Mr. Doidge claimed i.liat the policy of the Government was giving the manufacturers a great deal of worry. The < iovernment claimed that import restric-1 tions were helping the manufacturers, but that policy was a bad one and would not have been introduced if the Government had not followed a ''crazy*' policy. The Prime Minister had said the restrictions were here to stay, but Mr. Xash had given a pledge in London that they would be removed.

The manufacturers of New Zealand were in a cleft stick, he *aid. They were caught in three ways; the Government controlled supplies of raw material, it controlled through the Industrial Efficiency Act and it controlled prices. The Government held the manufacturer by both ends and the middle, but he did not realise it and for the last few months he had been digging his own grave and preparing to pay his own funeral expenses.