A POOR CASE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1171, 5 July 1911, Page 6

A POOR CASE.

In his'various speeches the ActingPrime Minister is endeavouring to cover up-his party's lack of a policy by reviling "Mb. Massey for having opposed old age pensions, advances to settlers, and land for settlement laws. It is a very poor case that lias to go back seventeen years in search for material to attack to-day's opponents; and the public is not likely to forget that talk of that sort comes all from a party with such a past as the present "Liberal" Administration. We might expect the hard Government, after its exploits in _ land legislation and gambling legislation and in borrowing to leave the past alone. Dealing with this point the Otago Daily limes has some telling criticism of the Acting-Prime Minister:

But, since. ho is so strongly insistent upon the -desirability, of party warfare being carried on upon fair Hues, why is he not absolutely honest in his reference to the votes that were recorded upon these measures? Why docs he not straightforwardly admit that his colleague, Mr. Thomas Mackenzie, also opposed the Land for Settlements Act? Did Mr. Thomas Mackenzie, by his antagonism to that measure, proclaim his unfitness to hold office in a Government? And why, when he is pillorying members of the Opposition for voting against a measure that was passed seventeen years ago, has Sir James Carroll not the frankness to say that not only his colleague, Mr. Thomas Mackenzie, but also his colleague, Mr. J. A. Millar, opposed the enactment of the Advances to Settlors Bill? Is it not apparent that if Mr. Massey, by the opposition he offered to that Bill, for the fame reasons as'were urged by Mr. J. A. Millar in explanation of his opposition—namely, that he was pledged to oppose further borrowing—showed himself to .be not entitled to tho confidence of the electors as a.member of a Government Mr. Thomas Mackenzie and Mr. Millar are in precisely the same case? I

As to the members of the Opposition who voted against the Old Age Pensions Bill, the Daily Times points out that their opposition was directed, not against the principle of the measure, but against its restricted scope, its discrimination against the thrifty, the unsoundness of its financial basis, and against the Government's failure to consider sufficiently a system of State annuities. On every single point the justice of their criticisms has been admitted by the Government in subsequent amending legislation. But, of course, maladroit criticism and misrepresentation arc the only weapons left to the Government, since it has no policy; and the public will hardly need our advice to discount all Ministerialist argument by about 99 per cent. One of the leading organs of the Government declared, after last election, that the set-back to the party was the result of having no policy. The Government is in an even worse position to-day than it was then. It still has no policy, and it has added three more years of maladministration to the debt against it.