The Power Debate

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25608, 24 September 1948, Page 6

The Power Debate

The Leader of the Opposition chose good ground for the no confidence lAotion in which he challenged the Government’s record and, of course, its majority. The Government was able to defeat the motion; it cannot defeat the facts. Anybody who cares to take the trouble may read these in the reported statements of the officers and the Minister in charge of the Hydro-electric Department over a period of years. They are conclusive in two respects particularly. First, the public has been confused and misled by assurances which the event has again and again proved to be false. Second, the public has never been given clear and sufficient evidence to show that the department has in time, and resolutely, and resourcefully pursued the possibilities of establishing stand-by plants, and that it has failed only because success was impossible. On the contrary, there is much evidence—again in official statements—to suggest that the department has been half-hearted, has temporised, has backed and filled, and has failed because it. has made difficulties rather than because it has encountered them. Against the record, the Minister’s bold assertion (it is no more than an assertion, and it is very bold indeed) that he inherited a desk bare of plans for development and his plea that six years of war crippled his own are not enough. It would be wrong to say that the Government has done nothing; wrong to say that the Government has faced no embarrassing, no abnormal situation. Nobody says any such thing. What is said, and said justly, is that the Government has done too little, gambled too often, bluffed too much, and made bad worse. It is a charge of bad administration that the Government cannot repel; and it is heavy enough, in all conscience, to weight a motion of no confidence.