"SHYLOCK'S GRIP."

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

"SHYLOCK'S GRIP."

NEW ZEALAND'S FINANCES.

PEOPLE TO BE FREED.

(By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.)

WELLINGTON, this day

Not one Government member would disagree with the contention of the Opposition that the Government should pursue a policy of sound finance, but Labour did not believe that sound finance lay in following a system that chained the Dominion to a deb't in perpetuity. said Mr. C. W. Bos well (Government, Bay «f Islands) when speaking in the financial debate in the House of Representatives yesterday, j He prophesied that the time would come when the people of New Zealand would be freed from the shackles and fetters with which they had been bound by the financial powers.

"We believe that sound finance will enable us to retrieve for the people the power that has been handed over to private enterprise and to use it for the people," Mr. Boswell said. "We shall no longer put ourselves in the hands of people outside the country." During the speech of Mr. .T. A. Lee, Mr. F. W. Doidge had several times asked: "Will you repudiate?"

What would the Opposition do about the position? asked Mr. Boswell. Could they devise a means of redeeming the people of Xew Zealand from the cross of gold upon which the financiers had bound them? The people's debt went oil increasing by the compounding of interest, and under that system there was no way out for them. No natirgi had yet succeeded in freeing itself from its obligations under that system.

It was too much to expect that tho| arch-priests; of Mammon would lie willi »iir to submit to the. laws of God, but' tl'o Tjfilw-ur Government would =ee that SliylockVt grip on the finance apd national needs of the Dominion was shaken off. The people of Xcw Zealand would live and e\i>ard on the poods and services they prrduced. and then, and only then, could they he free. "It is a fight and there must lie wounds," declared Mr. "The people will have to realise that there will l>e wounds. They cannot come through without being hurt, but if they stick behind this Government they will come through. The fight has begun, and this, courageous Budget is one of the first actions in the fight."