LABOUR PARTY.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20835, 20 April 1933, Page 10

LABOUR PARTY.

MR SULLIVAN OPENS HIS CAMPAIGN.

MEETING IN CHORAL HALL LAST EVENING.

The Labour party commenced its municipal election campaign in earnest last evening, when Mr D. G. Sullivan, as candidate for the Mayoralty, and Mr J. McCombs, chairman of the Finance Committee of the outgoing City Council, delivered addresses in the Choral Hall. The speakers were supported on the stage by a full muster of the Labour candidates for the City Council, the Hospital Board, and the Harbour Board. The downstairs, portion of the hall was filled, and there was a fair sprinkling of people upstairs. A motion of thanks to and confidence in Mr Sullivan as Mayor and in the Labour councillors was carried, with some dissentient voices. Mr J. K. Archer, a candidate for the City Council, presided. Mr Sullivan thanked the trade unions and the Labour party generally for the confidence which they had shown in him in again nominating him as Mayor of the city. He said the Labour party was submitting a group of experienced and capable men and women for seats on the City Council, the Harbour Board, and the Hospital Board. The general public had no full or true conception of the duties of the City Council—the multiplicity of problems for solution, the amount of time sacrificed in the interests of the city, and the earnest attention demanded by the business both of the committees and of the council itself. The Labour members had taken their full share of the responsibility and the work. (Applause.) Unemployment Problems. After expressing appreciation of the confidence which "the citizens reposed in him in electing him to the mayoralty at the last election, Mr Sullivan said it was inevitable that anyone holding the position of Mayor should give a great deal of attention to problems arising out of unemployment. In his time he had had some personal experience of unemployment. He had been out of a job. A voice: You have two jobs now. Mr Sullivan: Yes. And I hope you will give me credit for doing them both very well.—(Laughter and applause.) The speaker said he had known what it was to go round the factories looking for work, to have only Id or 2d a day for a meal, and to sleep under the stars. Memories of those experiences had led him to establish the Mayor's Distress Fund in Christchurch. There had been criticism from one section of the community about his having started the fund, but his every move in that project had been made as a result of appeals by the unemployed themselves. "It wouid have been utterly inhuman to say to those people in distress who came to the Mayor's room to say, *Go to the Government which you have put in power,'" said Mr Sullivan. "If you want a Mayor who will do that, I am not the man for the job. (Applause.) In the last three months 3000 persons have come to the Mayor's room, in need and distress, and I have done my best to help them. "We have just reason to be proud of the citizens of Christchurch for their great response to the appeals made to them. And the curious thing is that some of the people criticising the Mayor were people who had themselves received assistance from the fund. Ido not want to do it, but before the end of the campaign I may be forced to give the names of those people."—(Applause.) No. 5 Scheme Criticised. Mr Sullivan spoke of what the City Council had done in securing continuation of the old No. 5 scheme, and in subsidising the wages of relief workers. The Government had acted in a very mean way by taxing the council's men, not on the subsidy alone, but on the whole of their earnings. In the main, the men were still better treated than they would be without the subsidy, though there was a small group of them who did not do quite so well, but who still preferred to remain in the service of the City Council. "We feel," said Mr Sullivan, "that the No. 5 scheme is not in the best interests of the country, for there must always, be a tendency on the part of local bodies to do work under the unemployment relief scheme which should be done on standard wages. We want to get back to normal times and to trade union wages and conditions, rather than the exploitation of the workers that is possible under the No. 5 scheme. A . sustenance scheme would give more satisfaction."

Various employment, schemes had been considered, he continued, and had been examined by the City Engineer and by other experts. The idea was to give the workers, say, a fiveday week, and the scheme which made most appeal to him (Mr Sullivan) was an irrigation scheme; but he hesitated to say it could be done till a conference of local bodies had been called, and the relief authorities approached. There had not been enough co-operation with relief ■workers' organisations, and he would like to see them called into consultation.

City Council Defended.

Mr Sullivan defended the City Council's action in maintaining the wage standard of its employees. The trade unions, the Labour parties, and the Socialist parties of the world had fought for the maintenance of wages aad the people's purchasing power, to keep the wheels of industry moving. What arrant humbugs and hypocrites the Labour members of the City Council in Christchurch would have been if they had agreed to a reduction in wages. Their action would have been acclaimed by the press of the whole country as a justification of the wage-reduction policy of the Coalition Government, which had been strenuously resisted by the Parliamentary Labour party, and which had placed the country in such a serious position. The Labour City Council, Mr Sullivan claimed, had carried out all its pledges. It had undertaken to reduce rates and electricity charges, and that had been done. The electricity charges to Christchurch consumers had been reduced by between £25,000 and £26,000 a year, in the last two .years, and the rates were the lowest in New Zealand. Rates and Finance. Mr McCombs, discussing the financial position of the council, said that ? a S° he drew attention to the fact that the council had suffered a 'oss *n 1 evenue other than rates of £b225 a year. Unfortunately also there was a record amount of rates outding—£ 45,000 for last year and £22,000 for previous years. Despite these handicaps the present council established a record general rate of 2Jd m the pound in 1931-32 and eclipsed that record by striking a 24d rate in 1932-33. Last year, however, the special rates were increased, and this offset to some extent the very low general rate which had been levied. Thus the present council last year was unable to improve on its previous year s record.

In the rates levied by the council for council purposes the saving to the years had been £30,290, said Mr McCombs. The reU 5§,325 ln total rates had been

.following were the figures J n neare , st thousands, 1930-31 being a year of Citizens' Association.

administration and the. Labour administration. ~ ggfg 1930-31- M* - General rate 139,000 I §2Sd dty tE3 US 334,' m 1 The latest municipal 1| pared by the Governm® ||< shows Chr 1 stchu* • -igji said jL B|| rated city in the McCombs. The || average rates (infrpfoog. jsni Ml per £IOOO of rateable <g%' tajl yj ffg gg SFSKSJffiStI 3s 7d. ~ At the close of tw Ja-li.ljgßM chairman, Mr % ' iiimW- fl Combs answered a ■ numcp. >7*nM| tlOQ&