Marlborough Candidates Summarise Their Views

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28447, 29 November 1957, Page 10

Marlborough Candidates Summarise Their Views

(From Our Own Reporter) BLENHEIM, November 28. * On the eve of the election the three candidates for the Marlborough seat, Mr T. P. Shand (sitting), National, Mr Roy Evans, Labour, and Mr G. R. Kerr, Social Credit, have issued statements summarising the views they have been expressing to well attended meetings throughout a strenuous campaign. The sprawling nature of the electorate has necessitated hard travelling and in addition Mr Shand has had arduous air journeys to speak in many parts of New Zealand.

Of principal local interest has been the controversy on the proposed car ferry across Cook Strait and each candidate has elaborated on his party’s attitude to this issue. MR SHAND Mr Shand in his statement says that since he has been member he has lent his weight and the weight of his position to every worthwhile project for the improvement of the district. The one local issue in the campaign of any magnitude had been the replacement of the Tamahine. The Prime Minister had stated unquivocally on behalf of the Government that the provision of an adequate service for the future had been accepted as a national responsibility. He had also stated that on the evidence so far available this would best be provided by a vehicular ferry. In other words he had promised that if a car ferry was the best way of providing a service, it would be provided that way. The L»abour Party had promised a car ferry. It had also promised up and down the country tens of millions of pounds worth of other expensive public works without thought of who was going to pay for them or who was going to go without. On the broader field of national politics the difference between National and Labour had been made clear as the campaign had progressed, the Government had set out a policy which had already brought valuable results. That policy was to give first preference to the development of industries and public services of the country and to divide the resultant income as fairly as possible between all sections of the community, allowing adequate reward for enterprise and thrift. The Labour Party by contrast, while still claiming to represent the less fortunate and lower paid sections of the community, had set out a series of election bribes deliberately calculated to attract to their cause the support of the moderately well to do. The proposed remission of income tax, for example, would give no help or relief at all to the lower paid groups and more than half the people would get no appreciable benefit. In his view, said Mr Shand, this was the most iniquitous hoax ever perpetrated by a political party.

MR EVANS In his statement Mr Evans said that as the election campaign progressed it had become obvious that the P.A.Y.E. legislation introduced by the National government had boomeranged. Most electors realised that Mr Nash had shown that he had a much more sound grasp of finance than any member of the Government. Labour’s promise of a £lOO rebate of tax had appealed as a very fair offer to help taxpayers in the transition to P.A.Y.E. There was no doubt that the Government was on the defensive and the way National Party candidates had descended to personalities and abuse proved to all fair-minded people that the Nationalists had reached the end of the road. Some people had said that this was a quiet election but his observations were that most housewives had made up their minds that the National Government had failed to keep its 1949 promise to reduce the cost of living, Mr Evans said. In Marlborough other factors would weigh against the Government. The people here, believing in democracy, felt they had been very badly let down in the fight for the car ferry. Every opportunity had been offered the Government to make a firm statement on this issue but no-one in Marlborough could find any satisfaction in anything that had been said yet. People should remember the 1949 promise to make the £ buy more. Did the Nationalists know how many thousands of mothers were out working to try to catch

up with the cost of living? Did they know it took a New ’>3lander all his life to own the roof over his head? Did they know that high interest rates hurt nearly everybody. MR KERR Mr Kerr in his statement said it was his aim and the aim of his party to give the people true provincial representation. He would, irrespective of which party was in power, spare no opportunity to advance the claims of the province to a rail and car ferry. This meant that Social Credit would place Picton under a harbour board and provide funds for its inauguration. With the railways wharf left as a government equity in the board Social Credit would provide interest-free finance to a local body composed of authorities interested in the rail and car ferry so that the people of Marlborough could gain the service they desired, not the service a Government department was prepared to give. The aim of Social Credit and its pledged objective at all times was to resume the right of the people to issue and control the financial credit necessary to carry on the business of the country, such issues to be backed by the productive capacity of the nation and to be made in such a way that production and consumption were always an equation, so that inflation and deflation became impossible. This basic monetary reform would provide the farming community with a stable economy, promote land settlement, give workers security in employment and buying power, assist housing, maintain social security benefits without taxation, bring pensions up to the economic wage standard, and provide income tax exemptions up to £6OO plus £2OO for wives and £lOO for each child. There would be tremendous fields for the relief of local body In education freedom of choice of schooling would be stressed, claims of private schools investigated and help made immediately available by the freeing of gifts and bequests from income tax and gift duty.