PARTY GOVERNMENT

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 227, 24 September 1943, Page 7

PARTY GOVERNMENT

PRINCIPLES ESSENTIAL

N.Z.'S ECONOMIC TREND A survey of the party system of Government, with particular reference to its application in New Zealand in recent years and its significance to young electors was contained in an address by Mr. R. M. Algie, National candidate for Remuera, in the Remuera Public Library Hall last night to an audience of about 120 electors, mostly youthful. To have effective government, he said, it was necessary to have the party controlled by a set of principles, and if these failed to go back to the country and get the decision of the electors on them. He suggested that the Labour party, faced with the conscription issue, which was entirely contrary to its professed code, shirked open discussion in the House and brought conscription into being by Order : in-Council. This created dissatisfaction and the party system was blamed, but the candidate contended that the cure was not abolition of the system, but an improvement of the party by elimination of outside pressure groups.

In respect to post-war policy, the Nationalists stood against the system of permits and licensed control introduced by the Labour party. The abolition of priyate enterprise and profit meant making all workers public servants, with some on the footing of the lower grades of the Post Office, who were paid below Arbitration Court award rates.

The Nationalists felt that the Labour system of members being responsible to Federation of Labour leaders tended to destroy Parliamentary government. They held that disputes between citizens should be settled in the law courts and not by Ministerial tribunals, which deprived citizens of an impartial hearing. The economic trend of the Labour party, he said, restricted the opportunities of young people by making social security the sole objective, instead of a means for safeguarding the unfortunate within a more expansive system to develop all talents for the ennobling of civilisation.