HAURAKI SEAT

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 116, 19 May 1931, Page 11

HAURAKI SEAT

Y, Y-ELECTION -FIGHT

MR. FORBES TO SPEAK

SIR JAMES PARR'S VIEWS

'Die Pi hue Minister (the Right Hon. G. W. Forbes) will leave Wellington to-mglit ftn Auckland. He will be accompanied by iho Hou. It. Masters. To-monow evening the Prime Minister will address a mooting at Otahnhu in support of J\lr. E. Allan, who is contrstiii^ tho Hauraki by-election in the interests of the United Tarty. ,Mr. Forbes will return to Wellington on Friday evening next, it "being his intention fo spend Friday morning in the Feilding distiict. Already considerable interest is be- j ing slffiWH in the by-olcclion campaign, I and the entry of the Prime Minister into the fray Mill naturally increase the interest. The Leader of the Labour 'Paity (Mr. 11. IS. Holland) will piobably speak on the night following Mr. Forbes, and the Leader of the Opposition (the Eight Hon. J. G. Coates) will take part later on. The late High Commissioner for New Zealand (Sir James Parr) is taking an active pait in the campaign in the interests of the Reform candidate (Mr. W. W. Massey), and in, a speech on. Saturday night he made a vigorous attack on the financial policy <of the Government. Sir - James said .the Piime Minister had -predicted a deficit for the current year of. £5,500,000, but piobably it would be found,, if Mr. Forbes's guesses were no more correct than they wcra last, year, that anolhei £1.000,000 would have to* be added to that- total. Sii James said the pioblcm was how that deficit was to be met According to the utterances' at Duncdin last week of the Leader of the Labour Party, he did not believe in wages cuts, '-and would balance his Budget by largo additions to income taxation, in order to maintain the present high,level of expend ituie. Mr. Forbes, also, after, making economies in departmental expenditure, was going to increase the income lax Tishich ahcady was one of the .highest in. the world. Neither Mr. Forbes nor Mr. Holland, however, realised that incoma-tax payers this year were not earning their former, incomes. If. the income tax failed . to. produce .. the, required revenue, and expenditure worenot cut dowjti, the country would be driven to face the Australian expediencies either of repudiation or of an inflated note issue. The Government was largely to blamo for the present critical position of the country, Sir James added. Tor two and a half years-it had borrowed extravagantly and there bad been an ovgy of expcndituio at a time- when tho great economists of tho world were warning everyone that there would be a serious drop in tho prices of produce., Now Mr. Forbes ' was suddenly panicstricken, and when there was no money left to spend his Socialist friends had deserted him. "I am pleased to support the candidature of a son of my old chief, the late Right Hon. W. F. Ma»scy," said Sir James. "The candidate's father was regarded' in Britain as a great 'Imperial statesman, whose staunch steadfastness was a considerable asset in the Imperial War Cquncil. His son possesses many of tho same characteristics, and I believe the Hauraki electorate could have no better representative than Mr. Massey, who himself is a suci cessful farmer living in a farming I electorate.''