MARCH TO SOCIALISM

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 232, 27 June 1932, Page 8

MARCH TO SOCIALISM

Mr. Campbell’s. Warning STATE IN INDUSTRY Danger Point Now Reached Dominion Special Service. Hastings, June 25. A blunt and frank denunciation of the Government’s "socialistic legislation,” and of the political and economic evils arising from rivalry among political parties in attempting to outbid one another in soliciting popular support, was uttered by Mr. 11. M. Campbell, M.P. for Hawke’s Bay, In an address to the Hastings Rotary Club at its weekly luncheon. Mr. Campbell assailed the Government in its role as a competitor with private business, and criticised in particular the State Advances Office, the Public Trust Office, and the Public Works Department, and also the Government’s activities under the Transport Act x Describing the system of State interference with private enterprise as wrong and unjust Mr. Campbell said that the system had been carried to the danger point, and the posliton now was extremely serious. Every year the Parliamentary parties bld as high as they dare in an attempt to win the votes of the electors. “And if they go on bidding in the future as extravagantly as in the past, this country is going to be run according to the principles of straight-out Socialism. We have already reached very near to that condition of affairs, and the whole of the system has been costing the taxpayer enormous sums of money.” Sop to Certain Section. The effect of the socialistic legislation that had been created, Mr. Campbell added, had been to provide for a certain section of the public a sop in the shape, of a reduction of taxation, but that reduction had been made at the expense of those who survived to pay the taxes necessary to make up the difference and to “keep the financial pot boiling.”. Almost every State enterprise, Mr. Campbell continued, was showing a loss, and the great question was how to find a means of checking these losses. The only imaginable solution was that an already overburdened section of the taxpaying public would have to foot the bill. A continuance of such a system of draining the reserve resources of the individual as well as of industry could have only one result, and that result would be national disaster. Those that could possibly be taxed on any pretext at all were taxed to make up the losses resulting from the exemptions allowed to the rest of the public. State Advances Office.

The Year Book showed that the State Advances Office, up to the end of March 'last year, had advanced a total sum of £24,000,000. Its income by way of taxation earnings on that sum amounted to £B5ll. If the money had been advanced by private trading or lending companies, as had been the practice before the State Advances Office came Into being, a far greater sum than £B5ll would have been earned, and a section of the taxpayers would have been spared, the burden imposed upon them by the necessity of keeping a Government department financially on its feet. “And I question,” said Mr. Campbell, “whether the money obtained by way of loans from the State Advances Office is any cheaper than we were able to obtain from the private lending organisations before the existence of the State Advances Office.” “In this town we have one of the rottenest of all the rotten examples of State interference with private enterprise,” he continued, in references to Government action in respect of local transport services, several of which have been put off the roads. “Nothing could be more unfair than to put these people out of business so as to make room for someone else. AU over the country the evil effects of Government interference and competition with private enterprise are being felt.” “A Dangerous System.”

The Public Works Department should be wiped almost entirely out of existence, and .works now carried out by the department should be done by private tender and private enterprise. “We have drifted into a dangerous system, and I think that most of us today see the futility of it,” added Mr. Campbell.

“In this small country, with a population of about a million and a half, we have over 40 different Government departments, each with its own head and an army of clerks, and each trying to boost its own work. We have reached a desperate position, and if we are not careful we shall find ourselves sharing the fate of Rome, where every second man became a tax-gather-er; or in other words a Civil Servant. We are setting the right way about crashing this country, and the crash will cpme if we are not careful. We are as over-burdened with local governing bodies as we are with Government departments. In this district alone we have a dozen governing bodies where two or three could do the whole of the necessary work. The whole system Involves an enormous extra cost as well as a waste of time. “The sooner this Government decides to devote itself to the task of governing and ■ ceases to dabble in business that it is not capable of conducting, then the better for everybody, and the greater will be the allowance of political and personal freedom to the individual,” concluded Mr. Campbell.