FARMERS' EFFORT

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 200, 24 August 1945, Page 3

FARMERS' EFFORT

DOMINION BENEFITS

GOVERNMENT CRITICISED Parliamentary Reporter. WELLINGTON, this day. The Government knew that if primary producer's had worked a 40hour week it would have been "in the cart," declared Mr._*Kidd (Nat., Waitaki), when speaking in the Budget debate in the House of Rep resentatives last night. It was not the Government that had been responsible for the wonderful war effort, but the people of the Dominion.

"Now that the war is over," said Mr. Kidd, "you are going to have farm workers saying that if it is the policy of the Government to advocate a 40-hour week we are going to have it. Will the Government stand for that?" If the farmers and farm workers worked a 40-hour week,, the Government would see the cost of living rise and the sterling funds in London drop. But for the fact that the primary producers had been working an SO-hour, instead of a 40-hour, week Social Security and all the other benefits the Government said it was showering on the people would fall to the floor like a house of cards.

Mr. Kidd, after dealing with the probloms facing high country runholders in the South Island, said that the Government's land policy amounted to socialisation of the land. When the Government came into office it said it was going to be the friend of the small farmer. The Government's policy had made many of the small farmers insolvent. The Minister of Finance, Mr. Nash: Not now. In 1931 half of them were insolvent.