"MAJOR PLATFORM"

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 67, 16 September 1943, Page 7

"MAJOR PLATFORM"

CONTROL OF CREDIT

"If the present monetary system is continued after the war, and we have to pay our tremendous debt charges, this country cannot avoid a gigantic depression," said Mr. L. Frame, Democratic Labour candidate for Wellington Suburbs, at his Wadestown meeting last night. There was a moderate attendance. The candidate was given an attentive hearing and was accorded a unanimous vote of thanks and confidence.

His party's major platform was control of credit and currency, he said. Until they had that they could not have any decent social structure. The Government and -the National Party were promising all sorts of things so far as rehabilitation, for instance, was concerned, but they forgot that it was impossible to rehabilitate soldiers without rehabilitating civilians, the people who were now engaged in war industries. The Government's proposals for rehabilitation were nothing but a huge relief scheme. "Mr. Nash has been held up as a good man," continued the speaker. "Let me tell you that in 1934 Walter Nash, under oath, said he believed that control of credit, and currency should be implemented if New Zealand were to be free from debt. This year he told the Labour Party Conference that there was no need for it and that the banks were doing the' job. And talking about people speaking with different voices, here we have Mr. Fraser saying they had already taken control of the banks, and then Mr. Combs says that they are going to take control of them. Until the Walter Nashes are swept overboard politically we will continue to stagger on the brink of a financial precipice, and when we start to pay these tremendous debts of ours we will have the depression. , The principles with which Labour stumped the country in 1935 and 1933 have been pushed into the background, and we now see a Government trying to run a system of State capitalism." Mr. Frame said that the Government had bungled the man-power position badly. Here they saw married men of 40 years of age, with children, being called up. He did not believe in that sort of thing. They had already seen the effect of the lack of proper family supervision over some of the young girls. Democratic Labour did not believe in sending married men of 40 overseas, and it did not believe in sending young boys of 18 and 19 away. (Hear, hear.) "I say let us do our utmost in the war effort," continued the candidate, "but we have done more than our utmost, and we probably still have a couple of years of fighting ahead of us. Our front is in the Pacific, whether, we like it or not."