SAVINGS BANK STORIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 79, 30 September 1938, Page 16

SAVINGS BANK STORIES

"Fairy tales" about the Post Office Savings Bank were denied as ■ being ridiculous by Mr. H. E. Combs, Labour Party candidate for Wellington Suburbs, in an address to a meeting of about 150 people in the Epuni School last night. Mr. J. R. McDonald presided. A unanimous vote of thanks and confidence was accorded Mr. I Combs on the motion of Mr. Owen, chairman of the school committee. Mr. Combs referred at length to the investment of Post Office Savings Bank deposits by the Government under, the direction of the Minister of Finance, Mr. Nash, than whom, said the speaker, there was no more straightforward and honest man in New Zealand. Like his predecessors, Mr. Nash was bound by the Acts of Parliament, and any deviation from the law on his part would bring down the wrath of the AuditorGeneral very quickly. These Savings Bank funds were invested today on exactly the same lines as they had been invested by preceding Ministers of Finance, and to suggest, even obliquely, that there was something different in Labour's handling of this trust and to suggest, however faintly, that this difference was not creditable was to suggest things that could not be supported by one tittle of evidence. Mr. Combs said he had been asked if it was true that a depositor who wished to draw £60 from her account had been told she could only have £30. It was ridiculous to put such a story about; it was quite as absurd as , the story current in Palmerston North that one lady depositor wished to withdraw £30 from her account arid was asked what she required the money for, while another lady who wanted to deposit three £5 notes had been asked where she got them from. These fairy tales were so absurd that they would not stand the test of open meetings, but they were a .part of the whispering campaign, and, as such, might do harm where it could not be overtaken.