Price Freeze Call “Wise After Event”

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31230, 30 November 1966, Page 18

Price Freeze Call “Wise After Event”

(Ned) Zealand Press Association*

WELLINGTON, November 29

The Leader of the Opposition (Mr Kirk) described the Prime Minister’s post-election statement that the Government had considered asking for a voluntary price freeze after the General Wage Order as “a classic example of being wise” a long time after the event.

He said: “It underlines the difficulties that confronted wage and salary earners, beneficiaries and superannuitants in the face of the continual increase in prices.”

Mr Kirk said it was interesting that Mr Holyoake had experienced a “conversion” over the idea of a wage freeze. “One hopes that it is lasting and truly meaningful,” he said. Mr Kirk said that when the Labour Party advanced its policy of price freezing in as-

sociation with wage orders, the Prime Minister had been one of the first to “pooh pooh” it as impractical.

“We welcome his conversion and hope that his new interest is more than a passing fancy.” Mr Kirk said a wage freeze at present, as useful as it would be for any future increases, would be quite ineffective in dealing with all the price adjustments which had been made in the last three weeks in anticipation of the wage order which comes into effect on December 1.

Mr Kirk said that as aged and other means test beneficiaries and supeirannuitants had been particularly hardhit by the eroding effects of rising prices on their benefits, the Government had a duty to take early action.

“The Government's newfound awareness of the deep public concern about constant price rises justifies some concrete action' and not just words,” said Mr Kirk.