WELLINGTON EAST

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 307, 22 September 1943, Page 9

WELLINGTON EAST

At a meeting in St. Giles’ Hall, Kilbirnie Air. L. T. ' Jacobsen (National, Wellington' East) stressed that New Zealand electors were facing two great issues—State ownership and bureaucratic control versus freedom. _ Under the present Labour Governments State control, he said, the people were full or fear. The candidate related that at the Wellington Hospital destructor over M cases of oranges had been buimt _ because the Internal Marketing Division had held them too long till they had gone bad. This was another evidence ot Government bungling. Wherever a Government bureau was set up to run flic business, rightly the lot of private enterprise, it invariably muddled the position. Instead of leaving the business of importing the country’s requirements in the hands of the established merchants, who were highly trained men and eflici•ent anil hiid the facilities for handling the goods, the Government set up another bureau that had taken on this responsibility. Mistakes had been made so numerous and so large that the taxpayers were saddled with enormous costs to pay for them. Air. Jacobsen said the National Party could and would offer State tenants the right to buy the freehold on the basis of weekly payments no more than they now paid in rent. In 25 to 30 years the purchasers would have tjieir homes free and unencumbered and hold the freehold title which was the best, title in the world, und gave the owner a stake in the country as weK as the pride of ownership. It was wrong of the Labour candidates to continue to fool and mislead the people by telling them that this could not be accomplished. They knew themselves that it could be done, but Labour wanted the people to remain forever paying rent and never building up the asset -of a real home of their own. Labour opposed the real goodwill of the people, and was determined to keep them the underdog.