MR. HAMILTON'S SPEECH

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 75, 26 September 1938, Page 15

MR. HAMILTON'S SPEECH

WAGES IN SLUMP

MR. FRASER'S COMMENT

$By Telegraph—Press Association.)

- AUCKLAND, September 25. *Xbe published reports of Mr. Hamilton's broadcast speech on Friday night suggest to me that he has evaded the issue .of whether the National Party would again reduce wages, salaries, and pensions if a world depression came and whether his party would again make the people of this country the sufferers they were before," f stated the Minister of Education (the Hon. P. Fraser) during speeches, at Takapuna and Milford on Saturday evening.

Mr. Fraser said there was neither justification nor. excuse for the low standards of living created by the National Government during the last depression. Instead of helping the farming community the National Government had reduced the income of everybody else and farmers suffered heavily. As far as he could see there was no assurance that the Nationalists would nqt do that again if similar circumstances arose.'

"One sees in the Press and on the hoardings the statement that the real issue at the coining election is private enterprise or State ownership," Mr. Fraser continued. "That is sheer nonsense, because if you are to have private ownership only on the one hand and State ownership on the other you get something that is postulated only in people's imaginations. Private ownership will do well in some instances and inefficiently in others. There is no general definition of private owner-

ship. What does-the National Party really mean by that advertised alternative? The right of ownership, to a person who has been running a* business has always been recognised by the Labour Government. It is more than our opponents did. Business was never better than it is today and the farmers' income has grown enormously."

Mr. Fraser said the National Party would do away -with the guaranteed price. In spite of what Mr. Hamilton had said wages would be lowered and social services reduced. It was Labour's policy to maintain the essentials of life in face of depression and to uphold the standard of living.

Votes of thanks and confidence in the Labour Government were passed at both meetings.