CHARGE AGAINST GOVERNMENT

Press, Volume LXXXIIi, Issue 25189, 21 May 1947, Page 8

CHARGE AGAINST GOVERNMENT

INDUSTRIAL UNREST DISCUSSED

ADDRESS BY MR K. J. HOLYOAKE

“The greatest indictment against the present Government is not that it has failed to plan for the future, but that it has failed to gove.u,” said Mr K. J. Holyoake. deputy leader of the Opposition. speaking at New Brighton last night. For the last 30 or 40 years the leaders of the present Government had preached industrial unrest, class hatred and class war. The wave of industrial unrest which had swept the Government into power in 1935. was now at its peak and threatened to leave the leaders of the Government high and dry as flotsam or jetsam.

instead of being a workers’ government. the present administration could now be called a stopwork or a strikers’ government. Mr Holyoake claimed. It was a spineless government, which rapidly was losing public confidence.

“I have nothing against the Russian system in Russia—providing they want it there,” Mr Holyoake said. “But if the people of New Zealand realised where we are heading now they would rise up in their wrath. I am certain that 95 per cent, of the people of this country do not want the Russian system in New Zealand. We have seen the tactics of these people in Australia, and we have seen some of them in this country.”

Mr Holyoake recalled that before the last general election the Prime Minister <Mr Fraser) had exhorted the militant unionists to be “good boys ’’ But one week after the election the watersiders had begun a go slow policy. The direct result of that policy. Mr Holyoake claimed, had been to deny food to the English people, hungering for the foods we could produce. The slow-turn round of ships, he said, had meant that fruit which was to have been sent to England did not in fact go

Tracing the history of the present trouble on the waterfront. Mr Holyoake claimed that the Government had made a “complete, abject, and utter” surrender some months ago. The waterfront position did not only affect the ordinary people of New Zealand in an academic way. The cost of it was borne not by the wealthy shipowners. but by everyone in- the community

The worst feature of the present industrial position, Mr Holyoake claimed, w’as a psychological reaction among unionists who now believed that

“lawlessness paid.” There was a feeling of frustration, too. among the ordinary members of the community who took the view that if they were subject to stabilisation and price control why should other members of the community be exempt. The result of this feeling of frustration was loss of production, he claimed.

Mr Holyoake was given round after round of applause for his address, which was given to a crowded hall.