The Press SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1938. National Party Policy

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22319, 5 February 1938, Page 14

The Press SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1938. National Party Policy

In his interim and incomplete statement of the National Party’s policy the leader, Mr Adam Hamilton, has given the country a great deal to welcome and approve with little to fear or doubt. It is no defect in such a statement that it raises some questions without suggesting an answer —questions, mainly, of means to stated ends —and leaves some issues still wide open. This is the year of a General Election; but it is not yet the time of an election campaign. Broadly, Mr Hamilton’s programme is shaped as one for the fullest possible preservation of private freedom of enterprise which means that instead of pursuing the expansion of State enterprise and State control as a thing desirable in principle and for its own sake the party will set itself to restrict such enterprise and control, in field and extent, to the indispensable minimum, and will make fresh departures only as their necessity becomes absolutely clear. Mr Hamilton might well have gone further and indicated that, given the opportunity, the National Party would review the present range of State industrial and commercial activity, with the object of retreating from all unwarrantable ventures and surrendering all unwarrantable competitive advantages. He might have indicated that the party would review the whole of the legislation by which trade and industry have been bound and burdened and that its object would be to simplify and ease, so far as possible, the regulative system. That there is real need for such a review no competent observer would deny. But in the meantime the electors who have watched the alarming speed with which the State has extended its own economic activities and powers and invaded and curtailed those of private enterprise will be content with the National Party’s declaration. One illustration of its significance should be referred to. Mr Hamilton turned the party’s face against the swallowing up of private enterprise in road transport by the Railways Department; and having claimed for the railways their right place as “an essential “part” of the national transport system, he correctly limited that place and part by adding that the community required “ a properly regu- “ fated and privately owned road transport service. complementary to that provided by the “railways,” and that the “first consideration” in regulating and controlling road transport would be “ service to the community.” It is almost superfluous to point out that this is a statement which implies very different aims and measures from those of the Minister for Transport, who has defined his first consideration as the protection of the public capital invested in the railway system. The National Party opens to the Dominion the chance of the best and cheapest transport it can get; the Labour Government, on the other hand, offers only such progress in transport as its bias in favour of the railway monopoly and of State enterprise will allow, and that is progress crab-fashion. Those electors who have studied the problem of transport with most care will hope that the National Party’s policy will be developed, as it may in full consistency with this general statement, by the promise, first, of an expert survey of transport needs, resources, and costs, and then of the framing and administration of transport policy under a national transport authority. A similar declaration on the question of public works would be equally valuable. Mr Hamilton’s policy speech contained more than one passage which indicated the party’s sense of the need for orderly development and an excellent passage on the subject of economy in tax levying. If the party will commit itself to the principle of a public works board, responsible for the planning and execution of national works, in due economic order, while the annual allocation of money remains, necessarily, the function of Parliament, a great gain will be made possible in both respects.