The “New” Politics

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 303, 18 September 1936, Page 11

The “New” Politics

Sir,—ln Wednesday’s issue of your paper there appears a letter by the New Zealand Welfare League. This letter deals with what the league terms the “new” politics. On examination of the league’s description of this * ‘new’’politics, however, the basic idea seems to be this — that electors demand that their Parliamentary representatives carry out the will of’ the people who elected them. If this is new, then it appears that electors have been deceived in the past, and it is high time that this innovation was brought info force. Apparently the league considers that, a dictatorship would be a much more desirable method of government, and that the people should be told what they should have and what is good for them. • The league endeavours to cover this idea behind the pretence that people should understand first the methods by which their desires should be fulfilled. The impossibility of educating people as to the methode by which their will must be carried out is obvious from a. slight consideration of present-day civilisation. When a town decides to install an electrification scheme it does not mean that the citizens shall undertake a course in the study of electricity; or when a coum ty decides that a bridge shall be built it is not necessary for the ratepayers to study bridge engineering. If that were necessary, we can be certain that their would be no bridges and no electric power. The methods of fulfilling these desires must be left to the experts. Similarly, if the people of New Zealand decide that the industries of New Zealand can fulfil all their wants, without taking from anybody, it is not necessary that New Zealand people should decide how this shall be done. All that is necessary is that their Parliamentary representatives shall instruct the economic experts to devise a method for distributing the plenty provided by industry. If the present experts cannot carry out this comparatively simple task, then Parliament should engage those who can.—l am, etc., DEMOCRAT. Wellington, September 17.