NATIONAL PARTY POLICY

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25969, 24 November 1949, Page 8

NATIONAL PARTY POLICY

LABOUR FEDERATION ‘ STATEMENT

PLAN FOR DEFLATION ALLEGED

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, November 23.

The executive of the New' Zealand Federation of Labour in a statement says:—

“From the welter of Nationalist propaganda of the last four weeks, one fact has emerged with startling clearness, a fact whose underlying implications spell disaster for our community. The National Party has a major plan based on a single policy. That policy is deflation.” The federation says that to begin a policy of deflation, the National Party must control banks and currency and a credit system. The federation says this has been clearly provided for by the National Party. It also claims that under the National Party stabilisation must go, price control and land sales control must go, and import selection must go. The primary producers’ pool funds must be given to the producers who will be freed then to determine their own prices without reference to the future or to the economic well-being of the community. “Controls all having been removed, the rest is easy,” says the statement. “The profit motive takes over, competition drives the weaker to the wall, big interests begin to take over, price cutting forces out competitors, and deflation is simplified.”

The statement says conditions will be worsened for workers. Industrial Policy Referring to the National Party’s industrial policy, the statement says:— “Workers resisting cuts in their working conditions or wage reductions, even workers refusing to work overtime made compiflsory by Nationalists, will be brought to heel by blacklisting, by the refusal of all work, by the pressure of starvation on their wives and families. This is the ‘discipline’ which the Nationalists have prepared for the workers. “The federation has pressed Mr Holland for four full weeks to explain the need for the legislation, but he refuses disdainfully to reply. The .conclusion is irresistible. The reason Is the same as his reason for his continued refusal to reply to the few simple questions on his financial deflation proposals put to him by the Prime Minister.

‘•fhe National Party’s deflation proposal is long-prepared, and the foundations have bean deeply laid. It depends for its success on the ability of. the Nationalists to discipline the workers and put down harshly the natural unrest that accompanies wage cuts, unemployment, and economic distress.” «

The federation calls upon all trade councils to meet urgently “to lay the facts before their delegates and to have the truth carried back to every worker before the chance is gone.”