UNITED PARTY.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19376, 31 July 1928, Page 7

UNITED PARTY.

MR VEITCH DELIVERS AN ADDRESS.

A FORECAST OF POLICY.

(puss assocutiox txucouk.)

NEW PLYMOUTH, July 30.

The Reform Party and its methods were attacked by Mr W. A. Veiteh, to about 100 people of the Taranaki Electorate to-night. The speaker also dealt with soveral planks in the platform of the now Party, and intimatod that the Party leader would be seleeted in the near future in Wellington at a meeting of candidates solected to eontest seats at the elections.

The three great problems facing the country to-day, said Mr Yeitch, were land settlement, unemployment, and financo, which woro" so closely related that thoy must be taken together. Since it had been in powor, the Reform Party had spent 107 millions in capital expenditure, exclusive of 82 millions Bpent on the war, and had very little to show for it. The trouble was that the money had boen spent on popular amenities, not in helping farmers to increase production. Great sums had been spent to make good highways, with the result that motor competition caused the railways to loso £780,000 last year. The huge expenditure on new railway works at Auckland and Wellington did not produce another box of butter, or a crate of cheese.

It was not the picture shows that lured country people to town, but the high interest rates, excessive taxation and loss of land values. The Reform Party's schemes of rural credit, rural intermediate credits, and rural advances provided the farmer with everything he wanted except money, which was the only thing he did want. The whole system of finance required amending, said Mr Veitch, and the present system of commercial banking by associated banks should a bo replaced by a triple system, including agricultural banking, industrial banking, and banking as carried on to-day by chartered banks. All three were required. The present system catered really , for the commercial interest# alone, resulting in over-importation when times were good, and unemployment when times were bad. The new Party proposed to. establish agricultural banking on sound lines, that would not inflate currency, but would attract money to farm lands, lie land policy must be aggressive. Rural lands should be divided into three classes —Class_ A lands, urgently required for subdivision, Class B land, suitable for subdivision but not urgently required, and Class C, all other rural land. Money should be .tuken from the State advances and rural credits funds to start a land settlement account in the agricultural bank. A group of settlers wanting to buy Class A land could purchase at a prico agreed upon, or, if the owner was not agreeable, tne prico to he fixed by arbitration. Land could_ then be either purchased by deposit on the amortisation principle, or, if the individual were_ without capital, he could lease until in a position to pay n deposit on purchase. A further reform, was needed in the electoral system, both the second bo N lot and proportional representation being worthy of consideration. _ Immigration was a good thing, but it must be stopped until unemployment ceased, and then only encouraged along with encouragement of a flow of British capital into the Dominion. Til®, Partv intended to do something . W the way of humanitarian legislation, especially ireearding workers* compensation. but this must not be hurried, or more unemployment, would result,