Mr Walker Considers His Views Unanswered

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30390, 14 March 1964, Page 15

Mr Walker Considers His Views Unanswered

“Mr Kirk’s assertion that my attitude is one of ‘passive Macawberiam’ is as far from the mark as his prophecy that I would need running shoes at the last election,” said Mr H. J. Walker, M.P. for St. Albans, in a prepared statement last evening. Mr Walker, replying to comments made by Mr N. E. Kirk, MP. for Lyttelton, on other remarks by Mr Walker on the New Zealand economy, said:

“Mr Kirk, in his ill-consid-ered statement, has not answered my comments on New Zealand’s economy, but has merely used the opportunity to restate some of his remarks made when he was entertaining the Victoria University branch of the Labour Party. “It seems odd that Mr Kirk did not rush to the newspapers in 1958 to show his concern for the workers and

consumers when they were so savagely attacked by his socialist Labour Party in office, or when net overseas assets of the New Zealand banking system fell by 54 per cent as a result of the fear by importers in 1957 that in

the advent of a socialist Labour Government, blanket import controls would be introduced. A fear which was well founded and subsequently proved correct. “If Mr Kirk is genuinely concerned about New Zealand trade promotion, why was it that his party deliberately boycotted the 1963 Export Development Conference? As I stated in my original comments. New Zealand’s exports last year increased by £5O million, a greater annual increase than ever before. “Again, I do not recall Mr Kirk rushing into print when, under his socialist Labour Party in 1959 bankruptcies reached an all-time high. Has he ever mentioned the fact, that under the first Labour Government overseas funds were allowed to fall to £6.8 million?

“Now that Mr Kirk is in opposition and has apparently had time to read ‘David Copperfield,’ perhaps he would do well to also study a book written by his former Labour Party colleague, Mr J. A. Lee, entitled "Simple on a Soap Box.”