LABOUR CRITICISED

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 73, 23 September 1927, Page 8

LABOUR CRITICISED

RAGLAN BY-ELECTION

SPEECH BY HON A. D. MftBGD

(By Tdesraph.) , (Special to "The Evening Pott 1*) AUCKLAND, This Day. A criticism of the Labour Party was" made by the Hon. A. D. M'Leoa, Minister of Lands, in the course of a speech at Tuakau last night. He said that the real issue in the Baglan byelection lay between extreme or industrialised Labour as led by Mr, Holland on the one hand, and sound government, assured finance, no class distinction, but equal opportunity for all—as ma the policy of the Eight Hon. J. G. Coates— on the other. Labour, as led by Mr. Holland, said the Minister, was to-day, preaching a modified political doctrine to the primary producers of Eaglan, while carefully keeping in the background the political.doctrine.which their, accepted and declared platform set out as their ultimate objective. While tell. ing the farmers at out-of-the-way meetings that the country was overrun witK Public servants, their accepted platforms, to which all accepted candidates must pledge themselves, aimed at the nationalising of the means of production, distribution, and exchange—which in plain English meant the taking over by the State all land, all means of distribution, whether by land or sea. and all banking. "This accomplished," said M*. M'Leod, "let me ask, how many Public servants will be required* Labour speakers in this contest have failed to tell the electors how in Australia the State-owned shipping line cost the Commonwealth taxpayers over 10 millions in losses, largely brought about by reason of job control and strike methods, Which made the service a laughing-stock to the whole world. The only suggestion which Mr. Holland and his party could make a couple of seasons back' when all our primary products and' exports were held up for weeks by a, strike with which we had nothing to So was that the New Zealand Government should pay the difference between the wages which the seamen's leaders" in! England has agreed to accept on their behalf, and those which they demanded here in New Zealand before they would take a single ship to sea. ' Reform, said the Minister, had *o quarrel with'the aspirations of real workers, "from whose ranks the great bulk of their support was drawn. Bef orm was definitely as in the put, oat to fight the doctrines of those who, by word and deed in the put, ai well as m the present, took sides with those ia Bussia, China, and elsewhere who sought to wipe out the British Empire and all it stood for. *