“PROMISES BROKEN”

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29367, 21 November 1960, Page 11

“PROMISES BROKEN”

The principal factor in the election is undoubtedly the smouldering resentment against the Prime Minister for* the glib promises made before the last election and the cavalier fashion in which he broke them. The sharp rise in prices after the 1958 Budget, which more than cancelled out the social security increase of January, and for most people more than cancelled the money they obtained from the increased family benefit, gave rise to deep resentment. The fact that our standard of living is almost back to that of 1957, with the purchasing power of the average wage currently at a level only one per cent, below that year, has mollified some people, though even the Government’s most loyal supporters are not showing any marked enthusiasm for their policies. Far from the old cry of “What’s your policy?” from the interjectors when one discussed the failures of the Labour Party, I have found audiences sharply attentive to any analysis of the political situation when Labour came to power in 1957, and the causes of their failure since to live up their promises.

It does not seem too much to hope that the public may give the Prime Minister and his colleagues on election day such a salutary lesson and such a clear indication of their disapproval of the difference between promise and performance that it will be a lesson to politicians for all time. Sorry as the Government’s record is in this respect, it does not seem to me to be of such importance as a reason for dismissing them from office as does the obvious intention of some of their financial measures to facilitate the process of socialising the means of production, distribution and exchange.

“Hie special tax concessions on savings channelled into Government hands and the removal of the previous concession on all savings is likely, if it should be persisted in, to be the death knell of building and investment societies, a step towards making the Government the sole source of moneys for housing and other small investment. The amendment to the Reserve Bank Act makes it clear that nothing is to stand in the way of the Minister of Finance in controlling or limiting the funds available to private enterprise through the trading banks. There is no need to strangle private enterprise if you can quietly starve it to death.

Mr Nash s recent statement of an expected £lBO to £2OO million of foreign capital to be invested in New Zealand in the next five years may seem like a change of heart, a resurgence of faith in private enterprise. “Come into my parlour said the spider to the fly.” Large monopoly or semi-monopoly industries do not present much of a problem to the Socialist bent on take them over, as President Castro has recently shown in Cuba.

Informal reports earlier indicated an apparent lack of interest in school Arbor Day ceremonies, the Canterbury Education Board was informed that 237 <BO per cent) of schools had observed the occasion “in some positive manner.' ’