STATE SOCIALISM

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24653, 24 August 1945, Page 4

STATE SOCIALISM

—♦_ — NATIONAL PARTY’S REPUDIATION

PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS TO CONFERENCE "The Press” Special Service

WELLINGTON, August 23. “Whether we can view with a senseof satisfaction the internal state of New Zealand, and what our servicemen will return to, must make the most unbiased critic pause,” said Mr W. J. Sim, N-C-, president pf the New Zealand National Party, in his address at the Dominion conference of the party, which opened at Wellington today. The conference is the first held by the party since 1943, and Mr Sim paid tribute to the great part New Zealanders had played in the victory. He said that in New Zealand there was frustration, delay in promoting domestic order where the beginning of post-war progress was possible, procrastination, indecision, and. general confusion. The causes were not far to seek. Making all allowances for the dislocations of war, the present internal state of New Zealand was the inevitable result of political theories which the governing authorities of t recent years had chosen to pursue.” Mr Sim appealed that the free New Zealand spirit manifested so abundantly in the fighting forces, should find its way into the government of the country, and be not merely impatient but intolerant of delays and procrastination. He emphasised that the National Party intended, if elected, to govern with no sectional outlook. “For 10 years past we have been, with frequent repetitions of the word ‘Democracy/ under the government of a dominant group who have come to New Zealand from abroad,” he said. “These remarks, I should add, are made in no 1 personal sense, and we, with all other New Zealanders, will always be found offering a welcome to arrivals from abroad, especially when they come ffom other parts of the Empire. The governing group are, however, not of New Zealand, and this in my view incapacitates them from understanding and interpreting aright the national spirit of New Zealand and the mind of the individual New Zealander, with his passion for independence and individual freedom. The group, in addition, have suffered from another disqualification in that they brought to New Zealand with them a set of political theories amount-, ing to an obsession, which are not only unsuited to the needs of this country, but it may be doubted whether these theories, in their fundamental essence, can be credited to be of British origin ”

, Time of Testing “In our immediate post-war years we are truly faced with a time of 'testing from which there is no escape, and the issue is unmasked for all to understand. The National tarty holds the view, and will maintain it to the end, that State Socialism means the extinction of the free New Zealand spirit, which has been progressively repressed, until now it has almost lost the heart to stand up and fight for its existence.’’

The National Party, he said, was the answer and was a call to all New Zealanders to unite in the next election and throw off the oppression and repression of State interference and control which were ajl but paralysing the country. They maintained strongly that it was possible to reduce prnctical Christianity into some form of organised political thought and action, without breeding and agitating a narrow sectionalism. Along that road lay no social peace and no united endeavour of the whole country; nor would it lie in sowing further, seeds of bitterness in trifling with the electoral system as was now suggested in connexion with the abolition of the country quota. . . “In our repudiation of State Socialism and the fettering of individual initiative,” he said, “we may look with #some affinity to our American cousins, whose abundant unfettered energy proclaims that their country has not yet outlived its pioneering stage.”