MR. WRIGHT'S CAMPAIGN

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 91, 17 April 1923, Page 4

MR. WRIGHT'S CAMPAIGN

RATES AND LABOUR "JUGGLING."

Assertions that he was attempting to pose as a "great financier" were refuted by Mr. B. A. Wright, M.P., when speaking at Mtramar Town Hall last night m. furtherance of .his candidature for the Mayoralty. The. meeting was presided over by Mr. Carter. Mr. Wright said the- memb'sre of the City^ Council were trustees, of the citizens' money, and all he had done was to show what had been, done with the money available during < his term of office as Mayor. He had never denied his responsibility for the amount of the antecedent liability of. the city being so large. The council during the time he was a member of the Finance- Committee had no alternative but to borrow money by way of overdraft, because tho. Government would not assist in the raising of money for capital expenditure. During the war the Government wanted the money itself. The council had had to get along a-a best it could, and what he had done when elected Mayor- was to draw public attention to the fact, and warn the' council' fhafc the council' was at the end of the tether so far as spending was concerned. The bank could not advance any further money for capital expenditure, and he had told the council that it would have to go steady. If he had not done that he would have been blamed afterwards when the facts became known. He had not shirked his responsibility, for he was not a coward, and- stood up for his convictions.. ".All I did," said Mr. Wright,- "was to make it clear- to the people that, for the time being, vie were at. the end of our spending tether, and that all the talk, about wanting; this and having more of that could 1 not be done. I was not able to do it. The Labour Party may be able to dive more wages, have morn parks, more rest rooms, and' cheap fares, but I want to say that T' can't da it, and don't know any other man who can without.,increasing the rales. You can't hove liie cakfnad eat it too. What ii the uas of

Mr. Praser juggling about the rates?it comes back to the same old thing: if you put it on, the shopkeepers will put it on again. You are all ratepayers, directly or indirectly, and if it does not hit you one way, it hits you another. Some people wonder why the cost of living goes up. It is because of this roundabout system of rating—the rates are passed on. ... When you see a man, Mayor or councillor, trying to do his best to steady the rates in every direction and keep them as low as pos-' sible, with a sufficient margin to keep the business going; don'J, have bricks heaved at him because of this, that, or the other, but realise that he, at all events, is doing his level best to look after: your interests. The duty of the Mayor is to hold the scales evenly between all sections of the community. . . . It is the Mayor's duty to see fair play between all sections of the community, and. not to see one section of the workers taking it out of the other workers' pockets. Ninety-fivo per cent, of the people of this town are workers. You don't want to think that the only man who is a worker is he who wears moleskin pants and uses a pick and shovel. There are other workers pat as good—men working with their brains. They are just as much workers as anybody else. Therefore, in our administration, lot us bo fair and just, and sec that wo are not taking it out of one worker's pocket and putting it in another's.' i In the course of his other remarks, Mr. Wright reviewed tho activities of the Corporation during the time he had been Mayor, and generally spoke on similar lines to his former addresses.