TIME TO CALL HALT

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 227, 24 September 1943, Page 4

TIME TO CALL HALT

REGIMENTING BUSINESS MR. H. T. MORTON'S VIEW Mr. .H. T. Morton, National candidate for Waitemata, believes in the effectiveness of the exhibit as a political tale-teller. To the platform of the Gaiety Theatre, Takapuna, last night he brought three large framed display boards, two legal tomes— the product of 1942 legislative activity—a case of lemons and a citrus grower. Each of them he used to demonstrate the growth and evils of State control.

To two of the boards, one setting out the list of licensed "monopolies" and the other a list of recent cases where licenses had been refused to firms and individuals wishing to establish extensions or new businesses, he gave special attention, illustrating them as examples of essential freedoms being taken away. To-day, lie said, few businesses were allowed to start without a license. The Government had created "an enormous number of monopolies." The principle was entirely wrong, and it was time New Zealand called a halt to it. A certain amount of regulation was inevitable in wartime, but there was far too much of it.

"This war has tieen a blessing to those who wanted to try out their pet schemes," he declared, urging that the aim of the Government was socialisation, even socialisation of the land. The National party, he said, had a warm regard for the small business man. It was the small business from which the big business grew There should be freedom to engage in private enterprise. The Dominion owed a great deal to private enterprise, which had built the type of character exemplified" in the men who had fought for New Zealand in the last war and in this.