Lack Of Hard Work By Parliamentarians Seen

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31224, 23 November 1966, Page 22

Lack Of Hard Work By Parliamentarians Seen

One parliamentarian, who had been there so long he was practically part of the furniture, had spoken between 250 and 300 words in all his years in Parliament, said the Social Credit candidate for Avon, Mr I. W. W. Barrow, last evening.

“Work it out at his wages a year and find out how mucn every word has cost,” he said. Mr Barrow was addressing 23 persons at an election meeting at the South Brighton School. He wanted to know what the public got out of sending such persons to Parliament. “They are not doing their work,” he said. “Some might be. But you get a lot just sitting down doing nothing.” “Till everyone pulls their weight, we will carry on in this happy groove, or till such time as the people wake up. And when the people wake up and do something about it I hope it won’t be too late.” New Zealand was going bankrupt, Mr Barrow said. The first thing that the people would know about it would be that some other country would own New Zealand.

“Things you hold dear will be sold to overseas combines to pay what we owe, and you will be no more than slaves,” said Mr Barrow. “It is worth thinking about.” Mr Barrow said that about 70 out of the people in Parliament were guaranteed their job, and they had been guaranteed their job for years and years. It did not matter how many times elections were held, about 70 per cent of the old cobbers, old buddies or friends in the exclusive parliamentary club they had in Wellington were going to be there. “They know when they’re going home that it was just a Christmas break and that they will be back,” said Mr Barrow. “If you knew that you had a job where the people would put you back every time, would you work? Would you work as hard? No.” Mr Barrow’s formula for New Zealand to increase its export earnings was to cut up such produce as lamb into pieces convenient for the overseas housewife and put it into attractive packaging to make it more appealing. He gave a hypothetical example of how a whole carcase of lamb would sell in Britain for £2. “You would get £5 for that if you cut it up,” he said. “And that would also provide extra work for New Zealanders.”

“The more you increase your production and the more you make it presentable, the bigger the sale.” Mr Barrow said that there were smells in Aranui from the Avon area. “There must be some reason why the Drainage Board is doing nothing about it,” he said.

"Would it not be that they are frightened when they find that it looks as if some money would be needed to fix

it—it would mean another loan. “Another loan would be another drag. I think that is behind it.

“They (the Drainage Board members) are frightened to see what might turn up. “We have to do a job. And we know how to go ahead and do it. We would see that it is done.” Mr Barrow said that the present system was dishonest because in a continuous state of rapidly-rising costs, people were robbed of the value of their savings and robbed of a just reward of their efforts. “In the last generation debt has more than trebled; the National debt is now more than £lOOO million,” said Mr Barrow. Now it is £1127 million. Therefore it is getting up to £l2OO million.”

New Zealand's financial policies were inadequate because through mass production, followed by automation and electronics, vast quantities of goods were produced with less and less human effort and the debt system of finance failed utterly to distribute efficiently and fairly this ever-increasing production. “We, the people, are forced to borrow to buy and pay high rates of interest,” he said. “All these goods and services are the result of the accumulated skills of our forefathers and efforts, but when we change our role from producer to consumer we find we cannot enjoy the fruits of our own labour without going heavily into debt.” The Social Credit answer, he said, was to reduce debt, taxes and costs. Just money free of interest made available to local bodies would, as as an example, halve the cost of local body development, and therefore slash local body rates and charges. “The only way in which our problems can be solved is through the gradual use of the people’s credit for the benefit of the people. “Just as New Zealand accepted overnight the principle of Social Security, which meant more money to those in need, so the acceptance of Social Credit in principle would allow an up-to-date, efficient and intelligent monetary system to start operating the day after this election,” said Mr Barrow.