ELECTION ATTITUDE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 82, 7 April 1943, Page 4

ELECTION ATTITUDE

THE NATIONAL PARTY

STATEMENT BY MR. HOLLAND

(P.A.) CHRISTCHURCH, Tuesday.

"Although the National party is certainly not responsible for the continuance of party government during the war we have no option to making the requisite preparations now that the Government has decided that an election must be held," said the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Holland, to-day, commenting on the joint statement of Messrs. Coates and Hamilton, deploring the holding of a general election. Mr. Holland said he agreed with the two Ministers that it was deplorable that sufficient unity to avoid an election had not been reached. The question of holding an election was debated by the House of Representatives, but Messrs. Coates and Hamilton had neither spoken nor voted against the proposal to hold an election this year. Lately predictions had been made that the war in the Pacific would last at least another three or four years, Mr. Holland continued. That meant that if no election was held a party Government which was elected in peace-time and which had spurned any move to get genuine unity for the duration of the war would be endowed with an unprecedented life of eight or nine years and perhaps more. He doubted if even those persons who felt misgivings about the holding of the election wanted, that to happen. Actually the speaker doubted if there had ever been greater interest in political principles than was the case to-day.