Finance Associate Reiterates

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32265, 7 April 1970, Page 19

Finance Associate Reiterates

“I do not retract what I said as it was, and it is true,” said the Associate Minister of Finance (Mr Pickering) on Saturday.

Speaking at the official opening of a block of 10 new pensioners’ flats, erected by the Kaiapoi Borough Council in Meadow Street, Mr Pickering said that he had been taken to task for illustrating how New Zealanders, specially the younger people, enjoyed a high standard of living, and he had said that many people bad come to expect every day of the week those things that New Zealanders once looked forward to enjoying only on special occasions.

“Many of us here can well remember in our large families when such items as green peas, ham, poultry, lamb, tinned fruit or ice-cream were rare treats,” he said. “They are not unusual today. “We could add other items which are almost common place and were once rare luxuries—cars, better houses,

comfortable furniture, ade quate clothing, electric light and heating and carpets or our floors,” said Mr Picker ing.

“We do expect a highet standard of living, and rightly so. This is a better world and we can both hope and expect it to go on getting better, but of course it costs more. We should also expect that we will have to pay for it. “We can pay for it with greater effort, new ideas and hard work and also by going without some of our creature comforts today so we can in vest for tomorrow.

“Many younger people want to eat now not only the table potatoes,but the seed potatoes as well. To provide for the future we will have to do as our older people, and the more thrifty generation did, go without a little of today’s comforts to provide for the future,” said Mr Pickering.