"COWARDLY WEAPONS"

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 142, 17 June 1932, Page 9

"COWARDLY WEAPONS"

GOVERNMENT ATTACKEI}

- That the* Government, had. got, back into power at the last General Election by using cowardly weapons, • issuing false propaganda, and: as a. result of "a black conspiracy with the brutal, heartless, daily newspapers" of the country, were some of the contentions put forward by Mr. E. Semple, Labour M.P. for Wellington East, when, speaking at Brooklyn last evening.

.Mr. Semple's address was devoted almost entirely to an attack upon'the Government; and in the main it followed the lines of-previous addresses. He claimed that the Government had not played the game by the* people and had abused their rights and privileges.

Mr. P. Fraser, M.P> for Wellington Central, expressed the view: that every person who had the interests of the people of the at heart must be opposed to. the present He summed up the policy of the Government as being "batons instead of bread." There was hardly an unjust or unfair proposal that could be thought of that the Government had not embodied in its proposals last session, all with the., intention oi placing the ..burden of the. depression on the shoulders of those least able, to bear it. To-day, he declared, 200,0.00 men, women, , and children were plunged below the proper subsistence level. It was time for the people to say in self-respect that the Government had gone far enough. He suggested that the'best thing the people : could1 do was to indicate, by signing the petition being circulated by .the Labour Party, that the Government ■should go out arid that a- commonsense Government should take its place.