PARTY COALITION SUGGESTED

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22894, 15 December 1939, Page 12

PARTY COALITION SUGGESTED

“Cannot Attribute Wrongs to War” MR ALGIE BLAMES STATE POLICY ITHE PRESS Special Service.] AUCKLAND, December 14. “The wrongs of which so many people are complaining, and the difficulties in which the Government now finds itself, are not attributable in any real sense to war conditions,” said Mr R. M. Algie, organiser of the New Zealand Freedom Association, in an address in the Town Hall this evening. Contending that these wrongs and difficulties were simply and solely the cumulative result of three years of Government policy, Mr Algie said it was perfectly obvious that the ill-effects of a long-continued policy of extravagant and partly unproductive expenditure of public money and of restriction, regulation and muddling interference with private business and industry were becoming increasingly clear to an ever-growing number of people. The speaker then outlined the constitutional means of redress open to those who were dissatisfied, “The Government is being forced to rely ilpon a whole family of radio uncles’ in its determined and continuous efforts to induce the people to believe that things are not as bad as they seem,” Mr Algie said. “Our political leaders are talking loudly of their belief in democracy, and they are just as constantly practising dictatorship. It is idle to say that we,are a free people. We are truly free if the people who are governed have the right of criticism and if the Government is ready to grant redress In New Zealand, neither of these conditions is fully satisfied ” Such a position was leading people to ask very direct questions about their legal and constitutional rights. The average citizen was as loyal as anv member of the Government and just as determined to play his part in the war effort of the country. But he was equally determined not to submit to any further instalments of socialisation. However, Mr Savage had said in a recent broadcast that his Government felt it would not be true to its party supporters if it slackened off in its policy of socialisation. When the Government passed the Marketing Act and the Reserve Bank Act, it had demonstrated, withoht room for argument, that the war effort of New Zealand was by no means its only aim, Mr Algie claimed. From a purely realistic and practical point of view, Mr Algie proposed the aim of a true coalition of political parties for the duration of the war Such a very desirable co-operation could be brought about only if the Government itself was prepared to mdke certain concessions, he said. In a democracy, legal power rested with Parliament; political power remained with the electors. In practice, this meant that a Ministry, backed by a sufficiently well-drilled majority in the House, could do very much as it ■wished.

Developing his proposal of a coalition, Mr Algie said that, if one side was to give up its right to criticise on party lines, the other would have to desist for the time being from introducing the very measures that would give rise to that party criticism. Since ’ho burning political issue at present was that of Socialism, the /Government would have to give an assurance that no further and unnecessary' steps would be taken in that direction in the meantime.