TRUCE PERIOD

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 111, 13 May 1941, Page 11

TRUCE PERIOD

BREACHES ALLEGED

POLITICAL PROPAGANDA

(P.A.) INVERCARGILL, Monday. A telegram protesting against what he calls a flagrant breach of the agreement between the Government and the Opposition was sent to-day to the Hon. W. Nash by the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. S. G. ' is at Present in InverThe agreement was "to minimise public platform political propaganda, and Mr. Holland contends that recent statements by the Minister of Health, the Hon. A. H. Nordmeyer, and the Minister of industries and Commerce, the Hon. p. G. Sullivan, have broken the terms of this agreement. , Mi\ Holland's telegram is as tollows. With a desire to promote national unity I made an agreement with the Prime Minister to minimise public platform political propaganda for a certain period, and I have strictly observed that arrangement, declining to permit any publicity for my speeches at party meetings. Last week the newspapers gave full publicity to a violent attack on the medical profession bv the Minister of Health, and later the Minister of Industries issued a purely propaganda statement about industrial licensing. "I regard these published statements as a flagrant breach of the arrangement agreed to by the Prime Minister, and unless I receive an assurance that such breaches of the arrangement will not be repeated. I shall understand that the Government does lot intend to honour the arrangement and shall act accordingly. "The public is heartily sick of this constant persecution of the doctors, especially when so many of them are sacrificing so much to tend our sick and wounded countrvmen on foreign battlefields, and more ■especially seeing that the doctors have complied with every requirement of the law. "Please let me have a prompt reply whether similar publicity to Ministerial propaganda is to be permitted in future."