RIGHT OF OWNERSHIP

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 43, 14 November 1939, Page 9

RIGHT OF OWNERSHIP

Mr. Hamilton On Policy Of “Controlling Everything”

MR. NASH ACCUSED OF DICTATING By Telegraph—Press Association. HASTINGS, November 13. “I can quite understand why Mr. Nash cannot accept my statement that when a farmer or any other section has tile right of ownership of his -own production taken away from him he has lost the most precious tiling,” said the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Hamilton, replying to a statement, by the Minister of Finance, Mr. Nash, in which the Government’s actions in the control of primary produce were defended. “The policy of the Government directed by Mr.' Nash—State Socialism—is to own and control everything,” said Mr. Hamilton. “That policy is based, as Mr. Nash has shown a hundred times, on telling the producer that Mr. Nash is better able to plan and. regulate his affairs than he is himself. ‘You work au'd produce,’ he says, ‘but then I take the lot. I have a plan and I can regulate things. You work as hard as you can so that my planning is made easier for me. If you have ideas of doing things in some way you yourself would find agreeable, they cannot be considered. If you happen to protest I will discipline you, because that is only an organized protest for democratic political ends, and, of course, I am not interested in democratic politics at all. Dictatorial planning is my bulwark, my strength.’ “A more insincere attitude than that taken up by Mr. Nash throughout his Healings with the producers it is difficult to imagine,” continued Mr. Hamilton. “He has assumed the airs of a dictator and the rights of one, all the while assuming an attitude of righteous indignation that anyone could question either his motives or his almost Divine right to plan everything for everyone. “He now brags of his plan of State Socialism, but resents a protest from those from whom he has taken ownership of control. I point out to Mr. Nash again that there is a limit to the amount of dictation, regulation, and planning that is justified. Mr. Nash has gone past that limit, “It is not surprising,’either, that to secure a basis for comparison in defence of his planning Mr. Nash has to use the worst period of the worst slump the world lias known. In itself, that reveals the tragedy of present circumstances.”