"STUPID" CLAIMS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 90, 13 October 1938, Page 23

"STUPID" CLAIMS

PROPAGANDA CONDEMNED

"It is a very poor cause that requires statements that are absolutely false to buttress it up," said the Minister of Education (the Hon. P. Fraser) at his meeting at the Hataitai School last evening, when referring to one of the "stupid" advertisements being published against the Labour Party. "Some of the advertising literature sent out is conveying wrong impressions, intentionally, without a doubt, and actually contains statements that simply are not true. This is a pretty serious charge to make against a political party, but it is so."

According to the advertisement in question, boys and girls at school would have tp pay poll tax if Labour remained in office. In the first place, said Mr. Fraser, the poll tax was first imposed by the Nationalists, and in the second place it was quite untrue that the parents of boys and girls at school would be called upon to pay the registration fee under the social i security scheme. That had been made j abundantly clear in Parliament and on a multitude of platforms throughout the country. "IN PAWN." Another advertisement showing a farmer above the caption "A Pawn — That's what I've been," was also commented upon by Mr. Fraser. "Nobody wants to be a pawn," he remarked, "but, even so, it is better than being in pawn and having the whole farm and stock and farm implements in pawn, as was the position in so many cases before the Labour Government came into office." He recalled' that the Commission of Inquiry presided over by Sir Francis Frazer had formed the conclusion that 50 per cent, of the farmers could not meet their liabilities, in the depression years, and Mr. Coates himself had estimated that 50,000 farmers were on the verge of bankruptcy.

Referring to an illustrated circular entitled "New Zealand in Your Hands," Mr. Fraser read a resolution from the Methven District High School Committee viewing the committee's concern at the distribution of the circular where it could easily come into the hands of children and have a most detrimental effect on their minds. The committee expressed its disapproval of one of the pictures in the circular and recommended parents not to leave the document where children of tender years could have access to it.

Finally, Mr. Fraser said that a prominent journalist not connected with the Labour Par# had sent him the following' note regarding the circular:—"The most abominable piece of propaganda I have ever known. In the interests of decent democracy these methods should not be allowed to pass."