Election Slanders.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19466, 13 November 1928, Page 10

Election Slanders.

One of the most striking features of the latter part of the election campaign in 1925 waa the assiduous circulation by the Labour Party of a monstrous falsehood. Up and down the Dominion the Labour candidates were telling their audiences, and the Labour organisations were spreading the same story through leaflets, that the Government proposed to cut down the wages of workers by 7s 6d a week. This atrocious falsehood was not merely contradicted over and over again, but was clearly shown to be a falsehood, but that did not prevent the Labour candidates from repeating the lie to the very end of the campaign. There has beeiv nothing quite like this during the present campaign, because even the Labour zealots can learn from their mistakes. Nor has there been, in Canterbury at least, any serious campaign of slander. In some other parts of the Dominion, however, the enemies of the Government have been going to very considerable lengths in the manufacture and circulation of falsehoods. This time it is not the Labour Party, but the United Party, that is the offender. In Auckland one of the United Party's candidates has been saying that £25,000 of the petrol taxation has [been appropriated by the Reform Party for election purposes and that the film censorship has been subsidised by film manufacturers. This, as an Auckland paper points out, is something more than the defamation of a Party: it is an attack upon the professional reputation and honour of public officials. Another Liberal candidate has made charges of " bribery." Some of these are too absurd to require attention, but two of them have been noticed by Mr Coates. One was an allegation that a contract for two locomotives was given to the Thames engineering works " during an election " campaign." The fact is that this firm have built and repaired locomotives for the Government for many years, and the order referred to was given in the ordinary course of business. The second charge was that salaries in certain branches of the Civil Service have been raised within the past few days. The candidate making this charge said that "failing a denial " of his charge," and " if it were true," then the Government stood convicted of attempting to buy votes. Mr Coates denied the charge, and the candidate had.nothing to say. He had either invented his story or had listened to and, without ascertaining any facts, had circulated a nasty slander. TheAuck-

land Herald reports that the United Party candidates have not confined their attention to the Government. They have made unfair and unsuccessful attempts to discredit at least one member of the Labour Party. In various parts of the Dominion some baseless attacks have been made upon Mr Coates, against whom there has been a kind of whispering campaign. Sensible people pay little attention to these malicious stories, but there is a type of politician or political agent who knows that all electors are not sensible, and who does not scruple to exploit the readiness of weak-minded and uncharitable people to believe the worst of anybody.