Labour promises would cost $600m—P.M.

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33063, 2 November 1972, Page 16

Labour promises would cost $600m—P.M.

CVetp Zealand Press Association) GISBORNE.

The Labour Party’s election promises would cost the country about s6oom a year, the Prime Minister (Mr Marshall) said tonight.

Addressing about 500 people at a public meeting in Gisborne, Mr Marshall said the first impression of Labour’s policy was that it was making even greater and more extravagant promises of Government expenditure than in any previous election.

“The Labour Party’s promises would be more credible if they were more moderate,” Mr Marshall said. “They are promising too much of a good thing, and

there’s a catch in it. The catch is that the people pay.” “The National Party does not make these kinds of promises,” he said. "We have more concern for the good government of the country and for the steady and continuing progress of the country.” Labour’s policy for taxation paid on overtime was “wrong in principle and impractical in operation,” he said. The Government had looked at the idea once, and found it to be so. Mr Marshall said that another political ploy used by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Kirk) in his address last night was to give a catalogue of the ills of the country, "real or imagined," claiming that they were there because of the alleged incompetence of the Government. Mr Kirk tried to imply that all the country needed to do was to elect a Labour Government, and these various ills would disappear. “Sensible people who take a realistic view of society

know that while improvements in social conditions and in the behaviour of people should be our constant concern—and have been under a National Government—there are many factors quite outside the scope of the Government in a free society, involving the responsibilities of family, church, school and community, which a change of government would not affect,” he said. Mr Marshall rejected the Labour Party’s proposal that police should have the power to confiscate “the motorcycles of bikies.” Such a proposal was a “first step to a kind of tyranny that I would not tolerate in this country,” he said. People were entitled to be free and to go about their business until they broke the law, Mr Marshall said. “Mr Kirk’s is a most dangerous policy to follow. I am, of course, strongly opposed to the breaking of laws, but equally I am concerned to ensure that people should be free to go about their lawful business, and should not be interfered with on a suspicion that they might break the law.”